mned to do so. If you win, you
will still have to pay under the terms of your contract. For you will
have won the first suit you have ever pleaded. So if you win, you lose
under the terms of the contract: if you are defeated, you lose by the
sentence of the court.' What more would you have? The jury thought the
argument a marvel of shrewdness and quite irrefutable. But Euathlus
showed himself a very perfect pupil of so cunning a master, and turned
back the dilemma on its inventor. 'In that case,' he replied, 'I owe
your fee under neither count. For either I win and am acquitted by the
court, or lose and am released from the bargain, which states that I
do not owe you the fee if I am defeated in my first case in court. And
this is my first case! So in any case I come off scot free; if I lose,
I am saved by the contract; if I win, by the verdict of the jury.'
What think you? Does not the opposition of these sophistic arguments
remind you of brambles, that the wind has entangled one with another?
They cling together; thorns of like length on either side, each
penetrating to an equal depth, each dealing wound for wound. So we
will leave Protagoras' reward to shrewd and greedy folk. It involves
too many thorny difficulties. Far better is that other reward, which
they say was suggested by[61] Thales.

[Footnote 61: _Thalem ... suasisse_ (MSS.).]

Thales of Miletus was easily the most remarkable of the famous seven
sages. For he was the first of the Greeks to discover the science of
geometry, was a most accurate investigator of the laws of nature, and
a most skilful observer of the stars. With the help of a few small
lines he discovered the most momentous facts: the revolution of the
years, the blasts of the winds, the wanderings of the stars, the
echoing miracle of thunder, the slanting path of the zodiac, the
annual turnings of the sun, the waxing of the moon when young, her
waning when she has waxed old, and the shadow of her eclipse; of all
these he discovered the laws. Even when he was far advanced into the
vale of years, he evolved a divinely inspired theory concerning the
period of the sun's revolution through the circle in which he moves
in all his majesty. This theory, I may say, I have not only learned
from books, but have also proved its truth by experiment. This theory
Thales is said to have taught soon after its discovery to Mandraytus
of Priene. The latter, fascinated by the strangeness and novelty of
his newly