Herodotus, Histories 1.32.7 · 1.32.7
"Call him lucky, not blessed"
Read the full text in our reader
Solon — εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι τελευτήσῃ τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ ζητέεις, ὁ ὄλβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἄξιος ἐστί· πρὶν δʼ ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχεῖν, μηδὲ καλέειν κω ὄλβιον ἀλλʼ εὐτυχέα.
"And if on top of this he also ends his life well, he is the one you are seeking, worthy to be called blessed. But before he dies, wait; do not call him blessed yet, but lucky."
Word by word
The setting
The famous rule.
A note on this passage
This is the sentence people remember as "call no man happy until he is dead." The Greek is more precise and less gloomy. Solon does not say the living cannot be happy. He says they cannot yet be called <em>olbios</em>, blessed, a word for a finished life; until then, call them <em>eutychēs</em>, lucky. The advice is about which word to use, and when.
The idea outlived Herodotus. Sophocles ends <em>Oedipus the King</em> with it: count no mortal happy until he has reached the end of life without suffering. Aristotle, in the <em>Nicomachean Ethics</em>, asks whether we really must "see the end," as Solon says, and argues his way around it. And Croesus, the man it was said to, will remember it in the last place he would have chosen (1.86).
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Herodotus, Histories 1.32.7 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Herodotus, Histories — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Herodotus, Histories 1.32.7 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/herodotus/1.32.7/