Book 1
1.28
Certain Ionian youths having purchased of the Milesian fishermen their catch of fish, a dispute arose over the tripod which had formed part of the catch. Finally the Milesians referred the question to Delphi, and the god gave an oracle in this formAnth. Plan. vi. 51.: Who shall possess the tripod? Thus replies Apollo: Whosoever is most wise.Or in prose: Offspring of Miletus, do you ask Phoebus concerning the tripod? Whoso in wisdom is of all the first, to him the tripod I adjudge. Accordingly they give it to Thales, and he to another, and so on till it comes to Solon, who, with the remark that the god was the most wise, sent it off to Delphi. Callimachus in his Iambics has a different version of the story, which he took from Maeandrius of Miletus.Although disguised as Leandrius, the writer meant is Maeandrius, who is known (Inscr. Gr. no. 2905) to have written a local history of Miletus. Such histories, etg. of Sicyon, Megara, Samos, Naxos, Argolis, Epirus, Thessaly, abounded in the Alexandrian age. It is that Bathycles, an Arcadian, left at his death a bowl with the solemn injunction that it should be given to him who had done most good by his wisdom. So it was given to Thales, went the round of all the sages, and came back to Thales again.
