Plato, Timaeus 21d · 21d
What Solon heard, and from whom
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Critias — καταμελῆσαι, κατά γε ἐμὴν δόξαν οὔτε Ἡσίοδος οὔτε Ὅμηρος οὔτε ἄλλος οὐδεὶς ποιητὴς εὐδοκιμώτερος ἐγένετο ἄν ποτε αὐτοῦ. τίς δʼ ἦν ὁ λόγος, ἦ δʼ ὅς, ὦ Κριτία; ἦ περὶ μεγίστης, ἔφη, καὶ ὀνομαστοτάτης πασῶν δικαιότατʼ ἂν πράξεως οὔσης, ἣν ἥδε ἡ πόλις ἔπραξε μέν, διὰ δὲ χρόνον καὶ φθορὰν τῶν ἐργασαμένων οὐ διήρκεσε δεῦρο ὁ λόγος. λέγε ἐξ ἀρχῆς, ἦ δʼ ὅς, τί τε καὶ πῶς καὶ παρὰ τίνων ὡς ἀληθῆ διακηκοὼς ἔλεγεν ὁ Σόλων.
Critias: to neglect it, then in my opinion neither Hesiod nor Homer nor any other poet would ever have become more famous than he. And what was the story, Critias? he asked. It was about the greatest and most famous deed of all, he said, and the one most justly so, which this city did, but through time and the destruction of those who did it, the story has not lasted down to here. Tell it from the beginning, he said, what Solon told, and how, and from whom, as things he had heard to be true.
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The setting
Critias finishes the old man's wish, that no poet would then have been more famous. Amynander asks what the story was, and is told it concerns the greatest deed of this city, which time and destruction have blotted out. He asks to hear it from the beginning, with its sources.
A note on this passage
The comparison is built from oute Hēsiodos oute Hómēros oute allos oudeis poiētēs, "neither Hesiod nor Homer nor any other poet." The oudeis that follows the oute strengthens the negation and does not add a second one in English. The claim is marked as the speaker's own with kata ge emēn doxan, "in my opinion at least," and the verb egeneto an puts it in the unreal past: Solon never finished, and so it never happened.
Two explanations of why the deed was forgotten are given in one phrase, dia chronon kai phthoran tōn ergasamenōn, "through time and the destruction of those who did it." The word phthora will come back in the priests' account of what happens to people and their records. Amynander's request is for a chain of sources, ti te kai pōs kai para tinōn, "what, and how, and from whom," and he adds hōs alēthē diakēkoōs, "having heard as true," where the prefix dia- in diakēkoōs means heard through, from one speaker to the next.
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