The net brought up a golden tripod, the same which, it is said, Helen threw into the sea at that spot, in accordance with some ancient oracle, when she was sailing away from Troy.  A dispute arose at first between the strangers and the fishermen; afterwards it was taken up by their respective cities, who even came to blows about it.  Finally they consulted the oracle at Delphi, which ordered it to be given to the wisest.  Now it was first sent to Miletus, to Thales, as the men of Cos willingly gave it to that one man, although they had fought with all the Milesians together about it.  Thales said that Bias was wiser than himself, and sent it to him; and by him it was again sent to another man, as being wiser yet.  So it went on, being sent from one to another until it came to Thales a second time, and at last was sent from Miletus to Thebes and consecrated to Apollo Ismenius.  As Theophrastus tells the story, the tripod was first sent to Bias at Priene, and secondly to Thales at Miletus, and so on through all of the wise men until it again reached Bias, and was finally offered at Delphi.  This is the more common version of the story, although some say that it was not a tripod but a bowl sent by Croesus, others that it was a drinking-cup left behind by one Bathykles.

V. Anacharsis is said to have met Solon, and afterwards Thales in private, and to have conversed with them.  The story goes that Anacharsis came to Athens, went to Solon’s door, and knocked, saying that he was a stranger and had come to enter into friendship with him.  When Solon answered that friendships were best made at home, Anacharsis said, “Well then, do you, who are at home, enter into friendship with me.”  Solon, admiring the man’s cleverness, received him kindly, and kept him for some time in his house.  He was at this time engaged in politics, and was composing his laws.  Anacharsis, when he discovered this, laughed at Solon’s undertaking, if he thought to restrain the crimes and greed of the citizens by written laws, which he said were just like spiders’ webs; for, like them, they caught the weaker criminals, but were broken through by the stronger and more important.

To this Solon answered, that men keep covenants, because it is to the advantage of neither party to break them; and that he so suited his laws to his countrymen, that it was to the advantage of every one to abide by them rather than to break them.  Nevertheless, things turned out more as Anacharsis thought than as Solon wished.  Anacharsis said too, when present at an assembly of the people, that he was surprised to see that in Greece wise men spoke upon public affairs, and ignorant men decided them.