2
Periander had arranged for the entertainment, not in the city but in the dining-hall in the vicinity of Lechaeum, close by the shrine of Aphrodite, in whose honour the sacrifice was offered that day. For Periander, ever since his mother’s love-affair which xv.2.p.351"/> had led to her self-destruction, Cf. Parthenius, Love-affairs, 17. had offered no sacrifice to Aphrodite, but now, for the first time, owing to certain dreams of Melissa’s, he had set about honouring and conciliating the goddess.
2
For each of the invited guests a carriage and pair, fashionably caparisoned, was brought to the door; for it was summer-time, and the whole length of the street even to the water’s edge was one mass of dust and confusion by reason of the great crowd of vehicles and people. Thales, however, when he saw the equipage at the door, smiled and dismissed it. And so we set out on foot, leaving the road and going through the fields in a leisurely fashion, and with us two was Neiloxenus of Naucratis, an able man, who had been on terms of intimacy with Solon and Thales and their group in Egypt. He, as it happened, had been sent a second time on a mission to Bias, the reason for which he did not know, save only that he suspected that he was bringing for Bias a second problem sealed up in a packet. His instructions were, that if Bias should give up trying to solve it, he should show the packet to the wisest among the Greeks.
