To the question which is older, day or night, he replied: Night is the older by one day. Some one asked him whether a man could hide an evil deed from the gods: No, he replied, nor yet an evil thought. To the adulterer who inquired if he should deny the charge upon oath he replied that perjury was no worse than adultery. Being asked what is difficult, he replied, To know oneself. What is easy? To give advice to another. What is most pleasant? Success. What is the divine? That which has neither beginning nor end. To the question what was the strangest thing he had ever seen, his answer was, An aged tyrant. How can one best bear adversity? If he should see his enemies in worse plight. How shall we lead the best and most righteous life? By refraining from doing what we blame in others.

What man is happy?He who has a healthy body, a resourceful mind and a docile nature. He tells us to remember friends, whether present or absent; not to pride ourselves upon outward appearance, but to study to be beautiful in character. Shun ill-gotten gains, he says. Let not idle words prejudice thee against those who have shared thy confidence. Whatever provision thou hast made for thy parents, the same must thou expect from thy children. He explained the overflow of the Nile as due to the etesian winds which, blowing in the contrary direction, drove the waters upstream.

Apollodorus in his places his birth in the first year of the 35th Olympiad [640 B.C.].

He died at the age of 78 (or, according to Sosicrates, of 90 years); for he died in the 58th Olympiad, being contemporary with Croesus, whom he undertook to take across the Halys without building a bridge, by diverting the river.

There have lived five other men who bore the name of Thales, as enumerated by Demetrius of Magnesia in his 1. A rhetorician of Callatia, with an affected style. 2. A painter of Sicyon, of great gifts. 3. A contemporary of Hesiod, Homer and Lycurgus, in very early times. 4. A person mentioned by Duris in his work 5. An obscure person in more recent times who is mentioned by Dionysius in his

Thales the Sage died as he was watching an athletic contest from heat, thirst, and the weakness incident to advanced age. And the inscription on his tomb is vii. 84.: Here in a narrow tomb great Thales lies; Yet his renown for wisdom reached the skies. I may also cite one of my own, from my first book, vii. 85.: As Thales watched the games one festal day The fierce sun smote him, and he passed away; Zeus, thou didst well to raise him; his dim eyes Could not from earth behold the starry skies.In plain prose: As the wise Thales was one day watching the contest of the racers, thou, O Sun-god, O Zeus, didst snatch him from the stadium. I praise thee for removing him to be near thee; for verily the old man could no more discern the stars from earth.

To him belongs the proverb Know thyself, which Antisthenes in his attributes to Phemonoë, though admitting that it was appropriated by Chilon.

This seems the proper place for a general notice of the Seven Sages, of whom we have such accounts as the following. Damon of Cyrene in his carps at all sages, but especially the Seven. Anaximenes remarks that they all applied themselves to poetry; Dicaearchus that they were neither sages nor philosophers, but merely shrewd men with a turn for legislation.The opinion of Dicaearchus thus expressed is correct. With the exception of Thales, no one whose life is contained in Book I. has any claim to be styled a philosopher. The tradition of the Seven Wise Men and of their meeting at some court, whether of a native tyrant like Periander or of a foreign prince like Croesus, was used by Plato ( 343 A) and, largely through his influence, grew into a romantic legend, the result being late biographies, collections of apophthegms, and letters attributed to various authors, e.g. the apophthegms of Demetrius of Phalerum. Diogenes Laertius swallows all this as true; modern criticism rejects it all as forgery. Archetimus of Syracuse describes their meeting at the court of Cypselus, on which occasion he himself happened to be present; for which Ephorus substitutes a meeting without Thales at the court of Croesus. Some make them meet at the Pan-Ionian festival, at Corinth, and at Delphi.