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From, A. Toynbee, History,
in R.W. Livingstone (ed.), The Legacy of Greece, Oxford University Press, 1921.
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Page 18
These lines from the first canto of the Odyssey were imagined by a generation which could still afford to err, but as Greece approached her hour of destiny, her prophetic inspiration grew clearer. The poets of the sixth century were haunted more insistently than the Homeridai by the possibilities of disaster inherent in success of every kind—in personal prosperity, in military victory, and in the social triumph of civilization. They traced the mischief to an aberration of the human spirit under the shock of sudden, unexpected attainment, and they realized that both the accumulated achievement of generations and the greater promise of the future might be lost irretrievably by failure at this critical moment. 'Surfeit (κορος {koros}) breeds sin ὑβρις {hubris} when prosperity visits unbalanced minds.' In slightly different words, the proverb recurs in the collections of verses attributed to Theognis and to Solon. Its maker refrained from adding what was in his and his hearers' thoughts, that ὑβρις {hubris}, once engendered, breeds αιη {aiê}--the complete and certain destruction into which the sinner walks with unseeing eyes. But the whole moral mystery, to its remorseless end, was uttered again and again in passionate words by Aeschylus, who consciously discarded the primitive magical determinism in which Herodotus afterwards vainly sought relief.
Φιλει δε τικτειν ὑβρις μεν παλαια νεαζουσαν εν κακοις βροτων ὑβρις τοτ' η τóθ', ὁτε το κυριον μολη φαος τοκου, δαιμονα τ' εταν, αμαχον, απολεμον, ανιερον θρασος, μελαινας μελαθροισιν Ατας, ειδομενας τοκευσιν.
Cf. A History of Ancient Greece * Ancient Greek Political Theory * Greek History Resources
Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome
A History of Greek Philosophy * Greek Orthodoxy - From Apostolic Times to the Present Day
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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/ancient-Greece/toynbee-history.asp?pg=18
