The Best of the Worlds Classics, Restricted to Prose. Volume I - Greece | Page 9

to bestow on Cleobis and Bito, the sons who had so mightily honored her, the highest blessing to which mortals can attain. Her prayer ended, they offered sacrifice and partook of the holy banquet, after which the two youths fell asleep in the temple. They never woke again, but so passed from the earth. The Argives, looking on them as among the best of men, caused statues of them to be made, which they gave to the shrine at Delphi."
When Solon had thus assigned these youths the second place Croesus broke in angrily, "What, stranger of Athens! is my happiness then so utterly set at naught by thee that thou dost not even put me on a level with private men?"
"O Croesus," replied the other, "thou askedst a question concerning the condition of man, of one who knows that the Power above us is full of jealousy, and fond of troubling our lot. A long life gives one to witness much, and experience much oneself, that one would not choose. Seventy years I regard as the limit of the life of man. In these seventy years are contained, without reckoning intercalary months, twenty-five thousand and two hundred days. Add an intercalary month to every other year, that the seasons may come round at the right time, and there will be, besides the seventy years, thirty-five such months, making an addition of one thousand and fifty days. The whole number of the days contained in the seventy years will thus be twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, whereof not one but will produce events unlike the rest. Hence man is wholly accident.
"For thyself, O Croesus, I see that thou art wonderfully rich, and art the lord of many nations; but with respect to that whereon thou questionest me, I have no answer to give, until I hear that thou hast closed thy life happily. For assuredly he who possesses great store of riches is no nearer happiness than he who has what suffices for his daily needs, unless it so hap that luck attend upon him, and so he continue in the enjoyment of all his good things to the end of life. For many of the wealthiest men have been unfavored of fortune, and many whose means were moderate have had excellent luck. Men of the former class excel those of the latter but in two respects; these last excel the former in many. The wealthy man is better able to content his desires, and to bear up against a sudden buffet of calamity. The other has less ability to withstand these evils (from which, however, his good luck keeps him clear), but he enjoys all these following blessings: he is whole of limb, a stranger to disease, free from misfortune, happy in his children, and comely to look upon.
"If in addition to all this he ends his life well, he is of a truth the man of whom thou art in search, the man who may rightly be termed happy. Call him, however, until he die, not happy but fortunate. Scarcely indeed can any man unite all these advantages: as there is no country which contains within it all that it needs, but each while it possesses some things lacks others, and the best country is that which contains the most, so no single human being is complete in every respect--something is always lacking. He who unites the greatest number of advantages, and retaining them to the day of his death, then dies peaceably--that man alone, sire, is in my judgment entitled to bear the name of 'happy.' But in every matter it behooves us to mark well the end: for oftentimes God gives men a gleam of happiness, and then plunges them into ruin."
Such was the speech which Solon addrest to Croesus, a speech which brought him neither largess nor honor. The king with much indifference saw Solon depart, since the former thought that a man must be an arrant fool who made no account of present good, but bade men always wait and mark the end.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Herodotus, at a certain period in his life, came under the influence of Pericles and his contemporaries, but it is clear from his writings that he received from Attic thought and style little definite inspiration. J. P. Mahaffy has likened him to Goldsmith in his aloofness from his environment. Often ridiculed by his friends for simplicity, Goldsmith far exceeded his clever critics in directness and pathos, and thus gained a place in literature which contemporaries never dreamed would be his. The narrative of Herodotus, adds Mahaffy, gives us more information about the state of the ancient nations and their culture than all other Greek historians put together. His purpose, as Herodotus himself declares, was to narrate the great conflict between