Herodotus, Histories 1.31.3 · 1.31.3
"Better for a man to be dead than alive"
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Solon — ταῦτα δέ σφι ποιήσασι καὶ ὀφθεῖσι ὑπὸ τῆς πανηγύριος τελευτὴ τοῦ βίου ἀρίστη ἐπεγένετο, διέδεξέ τε ἐν τούτοισι ὁ θεὸς ὡς ἄμεινον εἴη ἀνθρώπῳ τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν. Ἀργεῖοι μὲν γὰρ περιστάντες ἐμακάριζον τῶν νεηνιέων τὴν ῥώμην, αἱ δὲ Ἀργεῖαι τὴν μητέρα αὐτῶν, οἵων τέκνων ἐκύρησε·
"When they had done this and been seen by the whole festival, the best end of life came to them; and in them the god showed that it is better for a man to be dead than to live. For the Argive men stood around them and blessed the young men for their strength, and the Argive women blessed their mother for the children she had."
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The god gives the brothers the best end of life.
A note on this passage
The sentence that stops readers comes quietly in the middle: <em>diedexe… ho theos hōs ameinon eiē anthrōpōi tethnanai mallon ē zōein</em>, "the god showed that it is better for a man to be dead than to live." The verb is <em>diedexe</em>, "showed plainly," from the same showing-verb as the proem's <em>apodexis</em>. Herodotus's book shows forth deeds; here the god shows forth a truth, and uses two young men to do it.
It is an old Greek pessimism, and Solon is not the only one to voice it: the poet Theognis says the best thing of all is never to be born. But Solon's version is exact. The brothers die at the top: seen by everyone, praised by the men for their strength, their mother praised by the women for her sons. Their lives cannot now go wrong. That is what Solon means by blessed, and it is the opposite of what Croesus asked him to confirm.
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Herodotus, Histories 1.31.3 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/herodotus/1.31.3/