To which Hesiod instantly replied:
When in eager pursuit of the prize the chariots, one ’gainst the other
Are dashed by the ringing-hoof’d steeds round the tomb where Zeus lieth buried.
This answer, it is said, won particular admiration and secured him the tripod.’
‘But pray what is the difference,’ asked Cleodorus, ‘between such questions and Eumetis’s riddles? It is no doubt right |B| enough for her to set women such puzzles by way of amusement, constructing them as other women plait their bits of girdles or hair-nets. But for sensible men to treat them with any seriousness is absurd.’ Eumetis would apparently have liked to make some retort, but she was too shy, and checked herself, her face mantled with blushes. ‘Nay,’ said Aesop, by way of championing her, ‘it is surely more absurd to be unable to solve them. Take for example the one she set us just before dinner:
I saw a man glue bronze on a man; with fire did he glue it.
Can you tell me what that means?’ ‘No, and I don’t want |C| to be told either,’ answered Cleodorus. ‘And yet,’ said Aesop, ‘no one is so familiar with the thing, or does it so well, as you. If you deny it, cupping-glasses[[32]] will bear me out.’ At this Cleodorus laughed, for he made more use of cupping-glasses than any medical man of the day, and the estimation in which that remedy is held is especially due to him. ‘I beg to ask, Periander,’ said Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a close friend and admirer of Solon, ‘that the conversation, like the wine, shall not be limited to wealth or rank, but shall be put on a democratic footing and made to concern all alike. In what has just been |D| said about wealth and kingship there is nothing for us commoners. We think, therefore, that you should take a government with equal rights, and each of you again contribute some opinion, beginning once more with Solon.’ It was decided that this should be done. First came Solon. ‘Well, Mnesiphilus, you, like every other Athenian, have heard what opinion I hold about such a government. But if you desire to hear it again now, it seems to me that a community is in the soundest condition, and its popular government most securely maintained, when the wrongdoer is accused and punished quite as much by those who |E| have not been wronged as by the man that has.’ The second to speak was Bias, who said that the best popular government is ‘that in which every one fears the law as he would a despot.’ Next came Thales with ‘that in which there are no citizens either too rich or too poor.’ Anacharsis followed with ‘that in which, while everything else is treated as equal, superiority is determined by virtue and inferiority by vice.’ In the fifth place Cleobulus affirmed that a democracy is most soundly conducted ‘when its public men are more afraid of blame than of the law‘. Sixth, Pittacus: ‘Where the bad are not permitted to hold office and the |F| good are not permitted to decline it.’ Last of all Chilon expressed the view that the best free government is ‘that which pays least attention to the orators and most to the laws.’ Periander once more summed up at the end by saying that they all appeared to him to be praising ‘that democratic government which most resembled an aristocratic.’
Upon the conclusion of this second discussion I begged that they would also tell us the proper way to deal with a household; ‘for while there are few who are at the helm of a kingdom or a commonwealth, we all play our parts in the hearth and home.’ |155| At this Aesop said with a laugh: ‘No! not if in “all” you include Anacharsis. He has no home, but actually prides himself on being homeless, and on using a wagon—in the same way as they tell us the sun roams about in a chariot, occupying first one and then another region of the sky.’ ‘Yes,’ retorted Anacharsis, ‘and that is why, unlike any other—or more than any other—god, he is free and independent, ruling all and ruled by none, but always playing the king and holding the reins. You, however, fail to realize the surpassing beauty and marvellous |B| size of his car, otherwise you would not have tried to raise a laugh by jocosely comparing it with ours. It seems to me, Aesop, that to you a home means those coverings of yours made by clay and wood and tiles. You might as well regard a “snail” as meaning the shell instead of the animal. It is therefore natural that you should find cause to laugh at Solon, when he beheld all the costly splendour in the house of Croesus and yet refused to declare off-hand that its possessor was happy and blessed in his home; “for”—he argued—“I am more desirous of looking at the fine things in the man than at those in his house.” It appears, moreover, that you have forgotten your own fox. That animal, when she and the leopard were engaged in a dispute as to which was the more “cunningly marked”, begged the judge to examine her on the inside, inasmuch as she would be found to possess more “marks of cunning” from that point of view. But you go inspecting the productions of carpenters |C| and stone-masons, and regarding those as the “home”, instead of the inward and domestic constituents in the case—the children, wife, friends, and servants. If these have good sense and good morals, a man who shares his best means with them possesses a good and happy home, even if it be but an ant-hill or a bird’s-nest.’ ‘That,’ he continued, ‘is my answer to Aesop and my contribution to Diocles. But it is only fair that each of the others should express his own views.’
Thereupon Solon said that in his opinion the best household was ‘that in which the resources are acquired without dishonesty, |D| watched over without distrust, and expended without repentance‘. According to Bias it was ‘that inside which the master behaves for his own sake as well as he does outside for the law’s sake‘. According to Thales, ‘that in which the master can find most time to himself‘. According to Cleobulus, ‘where the master has more who love than fear him.’ Pittacus would have it that the best house is ‘that which wants no luxury and lacks no necessity‘. Chilon’s view was that the house should be ‘as like as possible to a state ruled by a king‘, and he went on to observe that when some one urged Lycurgus to establish a republic at Sparta, he |E| answered: ‘You begin by creating a republic at home.’
This topic also having been dealt with, Eumetis left the room in company with Melissa. Periander then pledged Chilon in a capacious goblet, and Chilon in turn pledged Bias. At this Ardalus got up, and, addressing Aesop, said: ‘Perhaps you will be good enough to pass yonder cup on to us, seeing that these gentlemen are passing theirs to each other, as if it were a Bathycles’s goblet,[[33]] and are giving no one else a turn.’ ‘Nay,’ |F| replied Aesop, ‘there is to be nothing democratic about this cup either, for Solon has been keeping it all to himself for quite an age.’ Thereupon Pittacus, addressing Mnesiphilus, asked why Solon, by not drinking, was testifying against the verses in which he had written