He said also that there was no difference between life and death. “Why, then,” said some one to him, “do not you die?” “Because,” said he, “it does make no difference.” A man asked him which was made first, night or day, and he replied, “Night was made first by one day.” Another man asked him whether a man who did wrong, could escape the notice of the Gods. “No, not even if he thinks wrong,” said he. An adulterer inquired of him whether he should swear that he had not committed adultery. “Perjury,” said he, “is no worse than adultery.” When he was asked what was very difficult, he said, “To know one’s self.” And what was easy, “To advise another.” What was most pleasant? “To be successful.” To the question, “What is the divinity?” he replied, “That which has neither beginning nor end.” When asked what hard thing he had seen, he said, “An old man a tyrant.” When the question was put to him how a man might most easily endure misfortune, he said, “If he saw his enemies more unfortunate still.” When asked how men might live most virtuously and most justly, he said, “If we never do ourselves what we blame in others.” To the question, “Who was happy?” he made answer. “He who is healthy in his body, easy in his circumstances, and well-instructed as to his mind.” He said that men ought to remember those friends who were absent as well as those who were present, and not to care about adorning their faces, but to be beautified by their studies. “Do not,” said he, “get rich by evil actions, and let not any one ever be able to reproach you with speaking against those who partake of your friendship. All the assistance that you give to your parents, the same you have a right to expect from your children.” He said that the reason of the Nile overflowing was, that its streams were beaten back by the Etesian winds blowing in a contrary direction. X. Apollodorus, in his Chronicles, says, that Thales was born in the first year of the thirty-fifth Olympiad; and he died at the age of seventy-eight years, or according to the statement of Sosicrates, at the age of ninety, for he died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad, having lived in the time of Crœsus, to whom he promised that he would enable him to pass the Halys without a bridge, by turning the course of the river. XI. There have also been other men of the name of Thales, as Demetrius of Magnesia says, in his Treatise on People and Things of the same name; of whom five are particularly mentioned, an orator of Calatia of a very affected style of eloquence; a painter of Sicyon, a great man; the third was one who lived in very ancient times, in the age of Homer and Hesiod and Lycurgus; the fourth is a man who is mentioned by Duris in his work on Painting; the fifth is a more modern person, of no great reputation, who is mentioned by Dionysius in his Criticisms.