Herodotus, Histories 1.89.1 · 1.89.1
Your slave, speaking plainly
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Κύρῳ δὲ ἐπιμελὲς ἐγένετο τὰ Κροῖσος εἶπε· μεταστησάμενος δὲ τοὺς ἄλλους, εἴρετο Κροῖσον ὅ τι οἱ ἐνορῴη ἐν τοῖσι ποιευμένοισι. ὃ δὲ εἶπε
Croesus — Ἐπείτε με θεοὶ ἔδωκαν δοῦλον σοί, δικαιῶ, εἴ τι ἐνορέω πλέον, σημαίνειν σοί.
Cyrus took to heart what Croesus had said; and having sent the others away, he asked Croesus what fault he saw in what was being done. He said, "Since the gods have given me to you as a slave, it is right, if I perceive anything more, to point it out to you."
Word by word
The setting
Cyrus, struck by what Croesus said, sends everyone else away and asks what fault he saw.
A note on this passage
The correction lands. Herodotus marks it with an impersonal verb, Kyrōi... epimeles egeneto, "it became a concern to Cyrus," the kind of phrase a man uses when something will not leave his mind. His response is to clear the room, metastēsamenos tous allous, "having sent away the others": whatever Croesus has to say next, Cyrus wants it said without an audience.
Croesus answers the question with a sentence built on a single word, doulon, "slave." He has just gone from king to captive to honoured guest in the space of a few lines, and now he chooses the lowest of those titles for himself, theoi edōkan doulon soi, "the gods gave me to you as a slave." Dikaiō, "I think it right," follows from that status rather than in spite of it: a slave who sees something his master has missed owes him the truth, which is exactly the frame Croesus needs for the hard advice about to come.
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