Book 1
1.37
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.
1.37
Apollodorus in his Chronology places his birth in the first year of the 35th Olympiad [640 B.C.].
1.38
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.
1.38
There have lived five other men who bore the name of Thales, as enumerated by Demetrius of Magnesia in his Dictionary of Men of the Same Name: 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 On Painting. 5. An obscure person in more recent times who is mentioned by Dionysius in his Critical Writings.
