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THE ORACLE AT DELPHI
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Identity and Worth
“Count no man happy until he is dead.”
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Solon's admonition to Croesus, later echoed by the oracle. Herodotus reports that Croesus, on the funeral pyre, remembered Solon's words and cried out his name. Cyrus, curious, spared him.
INTERPRETATION
Happiness is a posthumous judgment. The living are still subject to reversal. This is not pessimism — it is the recognition that a life is a complete narrative only when it ends. Do not judge the story by its middle chapters.