Solon 13.57-76

Solon 13.57-76

57-62: Others are doctors; but even they have no power. Sometimes a little wound becomes big, and nobody could fix it giving drugs; other times he cures a man stirred with diseases by touching with his hands.

63-6: Fate brings good and evil to mortals; the gifts of the immortal gods are unavoidable. All things have risk, and no one knows where a thing will go once it's begun.

67-70: One man trying to do good falls into unforeseen disaster; another man, doing evil, god gives every good fortune.

71-76: There is no end to wealth. Those of us who have a large livelihood strive for double; what could sate everyone? The gods gave profits to mortals, and from them come disaster, which different people get at different times, whenever Zeus punishes them.

train of thought here is still difficult for me to follow. Feels a bit like Theognis -- loosely related couplets on themes of human inadequacy, fate, greed. Feels like you could arbitrarily rearrange these couplets and I don't think I would be able to tell the difference.

More of the same moral constellation that obsesses Solon: ate, hybris, koros (satiety), kerdos (profit)

lots and lots of examples of divine gifts in early Greek poetry: cf. Archilochus 1, Iliad 3.54, others too I think in elegy and iamb

Like the image of doctors healing through touch. I don't think doctors in the Hippocratic corpus heal diseases through touch (as opposed to touch for diagnosis or applying pressure to wounds): https://books.google.com/books?id=TXHsCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA247&dq=hippocratic+corpus+touch&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHzbea8beCAxVdF1kFHWkWC1kQ6AF6BAgKEAI#v=onepage&q=hippocratic%20corpus%20touch&f=false

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