Herodotus, Histories 1.87.3 · 1.87.3

Cyrus's question is built as a pair, polemion anti philou, "an enemy instead of a friend," the same vocabulary Croesus used three chapters earlier when he went looking for Greek allies to win as philous, "friends." The word that was his goal then is the word Cyrus throws back at him now. Croesus's answer carefully avoids naming names: he blames ho Hellēnōn theos, "the god of the Greeks," not Apollo, not the Pythia, not Delphi, as if the whole machinery of the oracle can be folded into one safely vague phrase rather than a direct accusation against the god who has just saved his life.

Herodotus builds the sentence around a pun plain English cannot keep: tēi sēi men eudaimoniēi, tēi emeōutou de kakodaimoniēi, "for your good fortune, for my own bad fortune." Both nouns share the same root, daimōn, a power that decides a person's lot; only the prefix changes, eu- for good and kako- for bad. Croesus does not say Cyrus caused his ruin. He says his ruin served Cyrus's good fortune, which is the closest a captive king can come to admitting the whole war was never really his to win or lose.

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