Herodotus, Histories 1.9.3 · 1.9.3
"Behind her back"
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Candaules — ἐπεὰν δὲ ἀπὸ τοῦ θρόνου στείχῃ ἐπὶ τὴν εὐνὴν κατὰ νώτου τε αὐτῆς γένῃ, σοὶ μελέτω τὸ ἐνθεῦτεν ὅκως μή σε ὄψεται ἰόντα διὰ θυρέων.
"When she steps from the chair to the bed and you are behind her back, then it is your care that she does not see you going out through the door."
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The setting
The last detail of the plan: how Gyges is to get out.
A note on this passage
Everything in the plan depends on a turned back. Kata nōtou, "at her back," is the one moment the queen cannot see, and Candaules builds his whole scheme around it. He thinks of his wife as a thing to be looked at: she walks, she undresses, she lays her clothes on the chair, she goes to bed. In his account she never looks at anything.
The last verb of his speech is opsetai, "she will see," negated: see to it that she does not see you. It is the one prediction in the plan that fails, and the whole story swings on it. Herodotus gives the king's speech in full so that the reader holds every detail of the plan and can watch exactly which detail breaks.
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