Herodotus, Histories 1.32.2 · 1.32.2
Seventy years
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Solon — ἐν γὰρ τῷ μακρῷ χρόνῳ πολλὰ μὲν ἐστὶ ἰδεῖν τὰ μή τις ἐθέλει, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ παθεῖν. ἐς γὰρ ἑβδομήκοντα ἔτεα οὖρον τῆς ζόης ἀνθρώπῳ προτίθημι.
"For in a long time one can see many things one would not wish, and suffer many too. I set the limit of a man's life at seventy years."
Word by word
The setting
Solon sets out the length of a human life.
A note on this passage
The first sentence is the whole argument in small: a long life means more to see (<em>idein</em>) and more to suffer (<em>pathein</em>), and the two infinitives chime. Greeks liked that pairing; "learning through suffering," <em>pathei mathos</em>, is Aeschylus's phrase for the same hard lesson. Time is not on the side of the fortunate. It is simply more exposure.
Then Solon fixes a number, and the word he uses is a surveyor's: <em>ouros</em>, the Ionic form of <em>horos</em>, a boundary-stone set in a field. He plants a marker at seventy years. The number comes from his own poetry. A surviving elegy of Solon divides a man's life into ten stages of seven years each, ending at seventy.
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