Herodotus, Histories 1.32.8 · 1.32.8
No country has everything
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Solon — τὰ πάντα μέν νυν ταῦτα συλλαβεῖν ἄνθρωπον ἐόντα ἀδύνατον ἐστί, ὥσπερ χώρη οὐδεμία καταρκέει πάντα ἑωυτῇ παρέχουσα, ἀλλὰ ἄλλο μὲν ἔχει ἑτέρου δὲ ἐπιδέεται· ἣ δὲ ἂν τὰ πλεῖστα ἔχῃ, αὕτη ἀρίστη. ὣς δὲ καὶ ἀνθρώπου σῶμα ἓν οὐδὲν αὔταρκες ἐστί· τὸ μὲν γὰρ ἔχει, ἄλλου δὲ ἐνδεές ἐστι·
"Now to gather all these things is impossible for a human being, just as no country is self-sufficient providing everything for itself: it has one thing but lacks another, and whichever has the most, that one is best. So too no single human person is self-sufficient; it has one thing but lacks another."
Word by word
The setting
Solon explains why no single life can hold every good.
A note on this passage
Solon reaches for a comparison a king will understand: a country. No land (<em>chōrē</em>) produces everything it needs; one has grain and no timber, another silver and no wine, and the best land is simply the one that lacks least. A human life is the same. The word for a person here is <em>sōma</em>, literally "body," as if a man were a small territory with borders and shortages.
The key word is <em>autarkes</em>, "self-sufficient," needing nothing from outside. Later philosophers made self-sufficiency the mark of the wise man and even of the happy life. Solon denies it to everyone, and he is speaking to a king who has spent his reign trying to own everything. The implied lesson is that even the richest treasury is a country with something missing.
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