the eternal law of revenge, the law of reprisal, of an eye for an eye, was (and remains) alive and well. Revenge is not only a right—it is a most sacred obligation. Whoever does not fulfill this charge will be cursed by his family, his clan, his society. The necessity of seeking retribution weighs not only on me, the member of the wronged tribe. The gods, too, must submit to its imperatives, and so too must even impersonal and timeless Fate.
What function does vengeance serve? Fear of it, dread in the face of its inescapability, should be enough to stop anyone from committing a dishonorable act that is damaging to another. It should function as a brake, a restraining voice of reason. If, however, it turns out to be an ineffectual deterrent, and someone commits an offense, the perpetrator will be seen to have set into motion a chain of retribution that can stretch for generations, for centuries even.
There is a kind of dreary fatalism in the mechanism of revenge. Something inevitable and irreversible. Misfortune suddenly befalls you and you cannot fathom why. What happened? Simply this: that you have been revenged upon for crimes perpetrated ten generations ago by a forefather whose existence you weren’t even aware of.
The second law of Herodotus, pertaining not only to history but also to human life, is that
human happiness never remains long in the same place
. And our Greek proves this theorem by describing the dramatic, affecting fortunes of the king of the Lydians, Croesus, whose story resembles that of the biblical Job, for whom Croesus was perhaps the prototype.
Lydia, his kingdom, was a powerful Asiatic state situated between Greece and Persia. Croesus accumulated great riches in his palaces, entire mountains of gold and silver for which he was renowned in the world and which he willingly displayed to visitors. This show took place in the middle of the sixth century B.C.E. , several decades before the birth of Herodotus.
The capital of Lydia, Sardis,
was visited on occasion by every learned Greek who was alive at the time, including Solon of Athens
(he was a poet, a creator of Athenian democracy, and famed for his wisdom). Croesus personally received Solon and ordered his servants to show him his treasures, and, certain that the sight of them astonished his guest, he queried him: “So
I really want to ask you whether you have ever come across anyone who is happier than everyone else?
”
In asking this question, he was expecting to be named as the happiest of all men
.
But Solon did not flatter him in the least and instead cited as the happiest of men several heroically fallen Athenians, adding:
“Croesus, when you asked me about men and their affairs, you were putting your question to someone who is well aware of how utterly jealous the divine is, and how it is likely to confound us. Anyone who lives for a long time is bound to see and endure many things he would rather avoid. I place the limit of a man’s life at
seventy years. Seventy years makes 25,200 days … No two days bring events which are exactly the same. It follows, Croesus, that human life is entirely a matter of chance…
.
“Now, I can see that you are extremely rich and that you rule over large numbers of people, but I won’t be in a position to say what you’re asking me to say about you until I find out that you died well…. Until [a man] is dead, you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate
.
“… It is necessary to consider the end of anything … and to see how it will turn out, because the god often offers prosperity to men, but then destroys them utterly and completely.”
And in fact, after Solon’s departure, the punishment of the gods descended brutally upon Croesus, in all likelihood precisely because he thought himself the happiest man on earth. Croesus had two sons—the strapping Atys and another, who was deaf and dumb. Atys was the apple of his father’s eye, protected and watched
What function does vengeance serve? Fear of it, dread in the face of its inescapability, should be enough to stop anyone from committing a dishonorable act that is damaging to another. It should function as a brake, a restraining voice of reason. If, however, it turns out to be an ineffectual deterrent, and someone commits an offense, the perpetrator will be seen to have set into motion a chain of retribution that can stretch for generations, for centuries even.
There is a kind of dreary fatalism in the mechanism of revenge. Something inevitable and irreversible. Misfortune suddenly befalls you and you cannot fathom why. What happened? Simply this: that you have been revenged upon for crimes perpetrated ten generations ago by a forefather whose existence you weren’t even aware of.
The second law of Herodotus, pertaining not only to history but also to human life, is that
human happiness never remains long in the same place
. And our Greek proves this theorem by describing the dramatic, affecting fortunes of the king of the Lydians, Croesus, whose story resembles that of the biblical Job, for whom Croesus was perhaps the prototype.
Lydia, his kingdom, was a powerful Asiatic state situated between Greece and Persia. Croesus accumulated great riches in his palaces, entire mountains of gold and silver for which he was renowned in the world and which he willingly displayed to visitors. This show took place in the middle of the sixth century B.C.E. , several decades before the birth of Herodotus.
The capital of Lydia, Sardis,
was visited on occasion by every learned Greek who was alive at the time, including Solon of Athens
(he was a poet, a creator of Athenian democracy, and famed for his wisdom). Croesus personally received Solon and ordered his servants to show him his treasures, and, certain that the sight of them astonished his guest, he queried him: “So
I really want to ask you whether you have ever come across anyone who is happier than everyone else?
”
In asking this question, he was expecting to be named as the happiest of all men
.
But Solon did not flatter him in the least and instead cited as the happiest of men several heroically fallen Athenians, adding:
“Croesus, when you asked me about men and their affairs, you were putting your question to someone who is well aware of how utterly jealous the divine is, and how it is likely to confound us. Anyone who lives for a long time is bound to see and endure many things he would rather avoid. I place the limit of a man’s life at
seventy years. Seventy years makes 25,200 days … No two days bring events which are exactly the same. It follows, Croesus, that human life is entirely a matter of chance…
.
“Now, I can see that you are extremely rich and that you rule over large numbers of people, but I won’t be in a position to say what you’re asking me to say about you until I find out that you died well…. Until [a man] is dead, you had better refrain from calling him happy, and just call him fortunate
.
“… It is necessary to consider the end of anything … and to see how it will turn out, because the god often offers prosperity to men, but then destroys them utterly and completely.”
And in fact, after Solon’s departure, the punishment of the gods descended brutally upon Croesus, in all likelihood precisely because he thought himself the happiest man on earth. Croesus had two sons—the strapping Atys and another, who was deaf and dumb. Atys was the apple of his father’s eye, protected and watched
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