(no subject)

[timelets]

“...and changed his mind about committing a living man to the fire, a fellow human being who had been blessed with happiness no less than he. Moreover, he began to fear retribution, and to contemplate the fact that nothing is really secure and certain for human beings. So he gave orders that the fire should be extinguished at once and that Croesus and the Lydian youths with him on the pyre be brought down. The Persians immediately tried to carry out his orders, but they were unable to get the fire under control.”

--- Herodotus, Histories.