‘Speaking generally, the man who knows the difference between impossible and unfamiliar, between unreasonable and unexpected, will be most a man after your own heart, Chilon; he will neither believe nor disbelieve without discrimination, but will carefully observe your own rule of “_nothing in excess_”.’
Anacharsis next made the remark that, as Thales believed [Sidenote: E] all the greatest and most important components of the universe to contain soul, there was no reason to wonder if the most splendid actions were brought to pass by the will of God. ‘For the body is the instrument of the soul, and soul is the instrument of God. And as, though many of the motions of the body proceed from itself, the most and the finest are produced by the soul, so again is it with the soul. While it performs many actions on its own motion, in other cases it is but lending itself, as the aptest of all instruments, to the use of God, for Him to direct and apply it as He chooses. It would,’ said he, ‘be [Sidenote: F] a very strange thing if, while fire, wind, water, clouds, and rain are God’s instruments, by which He often preserves and nourishes and often kills and destroys, He has never on any occasion at all used animals as His agents. On the contrary, it is natural that, in their dependence upon the divine power, they should lend themselves more responsively to motions from God than does the bow to the Scythian or the lyre and flute to the Greek.’
After this the poet Chersias mentioned, among other cases of persons rescued in hopeless situations, that of Cypselus, Periander’s father. When he was a newborn babe, the men who had been sent to make away with him were turned from their purpose because he smiled at them. When they changed their minds and came back to look for him, he was not to be found, his mother having hidden him in a chest. ‘It is for this reason [Sidenote: 164] that Cypselus built the house at Delphi, believing that the god had then stopped him from crying so that he might elude the search.’
At this Pittacus, addressing Periander, observed, ‘I have to thank Chersias, Periander, for mentioning that house; for I have often wanted to ask you the meaning of those frogs which are carved in such large size at the base of the palm-tree. What reference have they to the god or to the dedication?’ Periander having bidden him ask Chersias, who knew the reason and was present when Cypselus consecrated the house, Chersias said with [Sidenote: B] a smile, ‘No: I will give no information until these gentlemen have told me the meaning of their _Nothing in excess_ and _Know thyself_, and of those words which have kept many people from marrying, made many distrustful, and reduced some to positive dumbness—the words _Give a pledge, and Mischief is nigh._’ ‘Why do you need us to tell you that,’ said Pittacus, ‘seeing that you have so long admired the stories in which Aesop practically deals with each of those maxims?’ ‘Nay,’ replied Aesop, ‘he does need it, when he is joking at me. But when he is in earnest, he proves that Homer was their inventor. He says that Hector “knew himself”, inasmuch as, though [Sidenote: C] he attacked the rest,