Ancient Historians · Part 3 · Herodotus · B1
Herodotus I: Croesus and Solon
Part 3 of Ancient Historians: the first great story in Herodotus. Croesus of Lydia is the richest king in the world, and he asks the wise Athenian Solon who is the happiest man alive, sure that Solon will say “You”. Solon’s answer, “Call no man happy until he is dead”, comes true in the most dramatic way. Narrative tenses (past simple, past continuous, past perfect), linkers of time (when, while, as soon as, after, until), and the language of wealth and happiness, with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Herodotus’ book is about the great war between the Greeks and the Persians. But he begins the story with a man who was neither Greek nor Persian: Croesus, king of Lydia, so rich that we still say “as rich as Croesus”. He was the first king who, as far as the Greeks knew, conquered Greek cities.
As rich as Croesus! What did he do with all that gold?
He showed it to a visitor, Marcos: Solon, the wise lawgiver of Athens. And he asked him a question. Solon’s answer annoyed him very much, until many years later, standing on a fire, he remembered it. Tonight’s grammar is the grammar of storytelling, because Herodotus was a wonderful storyteller.
Sardis, the capital of Lydia, in the 6th century BCE
Herodotus (about 484–425 BCE) came from Halicarnassus, a Greek city under Persian rule. His Histories, in nine books, tell the story of the conflict between the Greeks and the Persian Empire, and of the many peoples involved, with long journeys into geography and customs. He says that his aim is to preserve great deeds and to explain why the Greeks and Persians fought.
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