at another [Sidenote: C] time will fancy they are going to die of want unless they have all the money in the world—all the king’s and all the private people’s?’ Chersias having nothing to say, Cleodorus joined in. ‘Well, but,’ he said, ‘I perceive that there is no equal distribution in the properties which even you sages respectively possess.’ ‘Yes, my dear sir,’ said Cleobulus, ‘because the law, like a weaver, allots us the amount which properly and reasonably fits each case. In your own profession, substituting reason for law, you feed [Sidenote: D] and diet and physic the sick by prescribing, not the same quantity for everybody, but the proper quantity for each case.’ Here Ardalus interposed. ‘I suppose, then,’ he asked, ‘it is at the bidding of some law that Epimenides—the friend of you gentlemen and the guest of Solon—abstains from other kinds of food and passes the day without breakfast or dinner by merely putting in his mouth a little of that “anti-hunger essence” which he makes up for himself?’ This remark having arrested the attention of the party, Thales mockingly observed that Epimenides was a sensible man for refusing to be troubled—as [Sidenote: E] Pittacus was—with grinding and cooking his own food. ‘You must know,’ he said, ‘that when I was at Eresus, I heard my hostess singing to the mill: _Grind, mill, grind; For Pittacus is grinding, As he kings it over great Mytilene._’ Then Solon expressed his surprise that Ardalus had not read the law ordaining the diet in question, seeing that it was written in the verses of Hesiod. ‘For it is he who first supplied Epimenides with hints for that form of nourishment, by teaching him to make trial [Sidenote: F] _How great and sustaining the food that in mallow and asphodel lieth._ ‘Nay,’ said Periander, ‘do you imagine Hesiod conceived of anything of the kind? Don’t you suppose that, with his habitual praise of economy, he is merely urging us to try the most frugal dishes as being the most agreeable? The mallow makes good eating, and asphodel-stalk is sweet; but I am told that anti-hunger and anti-thirst drugs—for they are drugs rather than foods—include among their ingredients some sort of foreign honey and cheese, and a large number of seeds which are difficult to procure. Most certainly, therefore, Hesiod would find that the “_rudder_” hung “_above the smoke_” and _The works of the drudging mules and the oxen’s labour would perish_,