Herodotus, Histories 1.88.3 · 1.88.3
Not my city, but yours
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Croesus — Οὗτος ὁ πολλὸς ὅμιλος τί ταῦτα πολλῇ σπουδῇ ἐργάζεται; ὃ δὲ εἶπε
Cyrus — Πόλιν τε τὴν σὴν διαρπάζει καὶ χρήματα τὰ σὰ διαφορέει. Κροῖσος δὲ ἀμείβετο
Croesus — Οὔτε πόλιν τὴν ἐμὴν οὔτε χρήματα τὰ ἐμὰ διαρπάζει· οὐδὲν γὰρ ἐμοὶ ἔτι τούτων μέτα· ἀλλὰ φέρουσί τε καὶ ἄγουσι τὰ σά.
"This great crowd, what are they doing with such urgency?" And he said, "They are sacking your city and carrying off your wealth." Croesus answered, "Neither my city nor my wealth are they sacking; none of this belongs to me any longer. It is yours that they are carrying off and driving away."
Word by word
The setting
Croesus asks about the crowd plundering below; Cyrus answers plainly, and Croesus corrects him.
A note on this passage
Cyrus's answer to the question is simple and, from his position, obviously true: tēn sēn... ta sa, "your city," "your wealth," the second person still addressing Croesus as Sardis's owner out of old habit. The crowd itself is an homilos, a dense, faceless mass, working with pollēi spoudēi, "great urgency," ergazetai, "busy" at plunder the way other men are busy at a trade.
Croesus corrects the grammar before he corrects anything else. Oute... oute, "neither... nor," strips away both possessives Cyrus just used, and the reason he gives is a single impersonal verb, meta, old shorthand for metesti, "there is a share": ouden emoi eti toutōn meta, "none of this belongs to me any longer." Then comes the correction itself, ta sa, "the things that are yours," thrown straight back at Cyrus. It is the sentence that will stop a conqueror in his tracks in the next section, a captive teaching his captor what he actually owns.
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Herodotus, Histories 1.88.3 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/herodotus/1.88.3/