should be given to the wisest; both parties to the dispute agreed upon Thales. After it had gone the round of the sages, Thales dedicated it to Apollo of Didyma. The oracle which the Coans received was on this wise : Hephaestus cast the tripod in the sea ; Until it quit the city there will be No end to strife, until it reach the seer Whose wisdom makes past, present, future clear. That of the Milesians beginning “ Who shall possess the tripod?” has been quoted above. So much for this version of the story. Hermippus in his Lzves refers to Thales the story which is told by some of Socrates, namely, that he used to say there were three blessings for which he was grateful to Fortune: “first, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes; next, that I was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.” It is said that once, when he was taken out of doors by an old woman in order that he might observe the stars, he fell into a ditch, and his cry for help drew from the old woman the retort, “How can you expect to know all about the heavens, Thales, when you cannot even see what is just before your feet?’’ Timon too knows him as an astronomer, and praises him in the Sill: where he says? : Thales among the Seven the sage astronomer. His writings are said by Lobon of Argos to have run to some two hundred lines. His statue is said -to bear this inscription? :