Herodotus, Histories 1.86.5 · 1.86.5
The pyre already burning
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λιπαρεόντων δὲ αὐτῶν καὶ ὄχλον παρεχόντων, ἔλεγε δὴ ὡς ἦλθε ἀρχὴν ὁ Σόλων ἐὼν Ἀθηναῖος, καὶ θεησάμενος πάντα τὸν ἑωυτοῦ ὄλβον ἀποφλαυρίσειε οἷα δὴ εἶπας, ὥς τε αὐτῷ πάντα ἀποβεβήκοι τῇ περ ἐκεῖνος εἶπε, οὐδέν τι μᾶλλον ἐς ἑωυτὸν λέγων ἢ οὐκ ἐς ἅπαν τὸ ἀνθρώπινον καὶ μάλιστα τοὺς παρὰ σφίσι αὐτοῖσι ὀλβίους δοκέοντας εἶναι. τὸν μὲν Κροῖσον ταῦτα ἀπηγέεσθαι, τῆς δὲ πυρῆς ἤδη ἁμμένης καίεσθαι τὰ περιέσχατα.
As they kept pressing him and causing him trouble, he told them then how Solon had come, in the first place, being an Athenian, and having viewed all his wealth had made light of it, just as indeed you had said, and how everything had turned out for him exactly as that man had said, speaking not at all more about himself than about all mankind, and especially those who, in their own judgment, think themselves prosperous. Croesus was relating these things, while the pyre, already kindled, was burning at its outer edges.
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The setting
Pressed further, Croesus explains: Solon had once seen all his wealth and made light of it, and everything has turned out just as Solon said, true of all mankind, not Croesus alone.
A note on this passage
Croesus tells the story the reader already knows: Solon came, an Athenian, looked at all his wealth and apophlaurise, "made light of it." What he stresses now is that everything turned out for him just as Solon said, and that Solon's words were not about Croesus alone but about all mankind, and above all about those who seem to themselves to be fortunate. The man who once asked to be called the happiest of men now repeats the lesson against himself.
The sentence ends almost as an afterthought on fire: tēs de pyrēs ēdē hammenēs kaiesthai ta perischata, "the pyre, already kindled, was burning at its outer edges." Herodotus lets the flame creep into the very last clause, almost in parentheses, while all the narrative attention has gone to the content of Croesus's speech. The effect is a kind of narrated suspense: a king discoursing on human happiness and his own foolishness while the fire that will kill him is already alight at the edges, closing in while nobody in the scene, reader included, is quite looking at it.
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