3
In discourses of this kind we spent our time by the way, and were now come to the house. Here Thales would not be washed, for he had but a while before anointed himself; wherefore he took a round to view the horse-race and the wrestling-place, and the grove upon the water-side, which was neatly trimmed and beautified by Periander; this he did, not so much to satisfy his own curiosity (for he seldom or never admired any thing he saw), but that he might not disoblige Periander or seem to overlook or despise the glory and magnificence of our host. Of the rest every one, after he had anointed and washed himself, the servants introduced into a particular room, purposely fitted and prepared for the men; they were guided thither through a porch, in which Anacharsis sat, and there was a certain young lady with him arranging his hair. This lady stepping forward to welcome Thales, he saluted her most courteously, and smiling said: Madam, make the stranger fair and pleasant, so that, being (as he is) the mildest. man in the world, he may not be fearful and hideous for us to look on. When I was curious to enquire who this lady was whom Thales thus complimented, he said, Do you not yet know the wise and famous Eumetis? —for so her father calls her, though others call her after her father’s name Cleobulina. Doubtless, saith Niloxenus, they call her by this name to commend her judgment and wit, and her reach into the more abstruse and recondite part of learning; for I have myself in Egypt seen and read some problems first started and discussed by her. Not so, saith Thales, for she plays with these as men do with cockal-bones, and encounters boldly all she meets, without study or premeditation; she is a person of an admirable understanding, of a politic capacious mind, of a very obliging conversation, and one that by her rhetoric and the sweetness of her temper prevails upon her father to govern his subjects with the greatest mildness in the world. How popular she is appears, saith Niloxenus, plainly to any that observes her pleasant innocent garb. But pray, continues he, wherefore is it that she shows such tenderness and affection to Anacharsis? Because, replied Thales, he is a temperate and learned man, who fully and freely makes known to her those mysterious ways of dieting and physicing the sick which are now in use among the Scythians; and I doubt not she now coaxes and courts the old gentleman at the rate you see, taking this opportunity to discourse with him and learn something of him.
