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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.
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It is a piece of good fortune for me, said Neiloxenus, to have found you all together here, and, as you see, I am bringing the packet with me to the dinner; and at the same time he showed it to us.
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Thales began to laugh, and said, If it is anything bad, go to Priene The home of Bias. again! For Bias will have a solution for this, just as he had his own solution of the first problem.
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What, said I, was the first problem?
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The king, said he, sent to Bias an animal for sacrifice, with instructions to take out and send back to him the worst and best portion of the meat. And our friend’s neat and clever solution was, to take out the tongue and send it to him,The same story is told in Moralia 38 B; in 506 C, and in Plutarch’s Comment. on Hesiod, 71 (Works ad Days, 719), the same story is told of Pittacus. with the result that he is now manifestly in high repute and esteem.
