Herodotus, Histories 1.32.4 · 1.32.4
"Man is wholly chance"
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Solon — τουτέων τῶν ἁπασέων ἡμερέων τῶν ἐς τὰ ἑβδομήκοντα ἔτεα, ἐουσέων πεντήκοντα καὶ διηκοσιέων καὶ ἑξακισχιλιέων καὶ δισμυριέων, ἡ ἑτέρη αὐτέων τῇ ἑτέρῃ ἡμέρῃ τὸ παράπαν οὐδὲν ὅμοιον προσάγει πρῆγμα. οὕτω ὦν Κροῖσε πᾶν ἐστὶ ἄνθρωπος συμφορή.
"Of all these days in the seventy years, which come to twenty-six thousand two hundred and fifty, one of them brings nothing at all like the next day. So then, Croesus, man is wholly chance."
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The total is spelled out in full, fifty and two hundred and six thousand and twenty thousand, the Greek way of saying 26,250, so that the reader feels its size. Then the observation that justifies all the counting: of all those days, not one brings anything like the next. Each day is its own event.
And the conclusion, one of the most quoted sentences in Herodotus: pan esti anthrōpos symphorē, "man is entirely symphorē." The word means what comes together on a person, what befalls him, and it often means disaster. English versions say "man is all chance" or "man is wholly accident," and neither quite catches that a human being here is not someone things happen to, but the sum of the things that happen.
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Herodotus, Histories 1.32.4 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/herodotus/1.32.4/