Herodotus, Histories 1.87.4 · 1.87.4

Croesus delivers the line in the plainest Greek in the whole episode, a single balanced sentence with no epic vocabulary at all: en men tēi hoi paides tous pateras thaptousi, en de tōi hoi pateres tous paidas, "in the one, sons bury their fathers, in the other, fathers their sons." The second half does not even repeat the verb thaptousi; Greek lets it stand understood, which makes the second clause land harder for arriving faster. It is the only line in the chapter built entirely from words a child would know, which is exactly what makes it the hardest one to answer.

The closing sentence hands responsibility somewhere else entirely: tauta daimosi kou philon ēn houtō genesthai, "these things were somehow pleasing to the daimones to happen so." The particle kou, Ionic for "perhaps," is doing real work; Croesus is only guessing at the gods' will, not claiming to know it, the same posture Solon tried to teach him at Sardis and that it has taken a funeral pyre to finally produce. The word daimosi, "to the divine powers," is plural and unnamed, wider than the single Hellēnōn theos he blamed a sentence earlier, as if, having said his piece against one god, Croesus steps back and leaves room for forces he cannot name at all.

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