When the approaching season showed the ripening crops, every man wished to provide olive-presses as quickly as possible; and Thales, having them all, let them at a high price.

His monopoly made his fortune, and he showed to his friends, says Aristotle, that it was very easy for philosophers to be rich if they desire it, though such is not their principal desire;-- philosophy does not find the same facilities nowadays.
[191] Thus Homer is cited in proof of the progenital humidity, "'Okeanos hosper ginesis pantos tet ktai;" The Bryant race of speculators would attack us at once with "the spirit moving on the face of the waters." It was not an uncommon opinion in Greece that chaos was first water settling into slime, and then into earth; and there are good but not sufficient reasons to attribute a similar, and of course earlier, notion to the Phoenicians, and still more perhaps to the Indians.
[192] Plut.

de Plac.

Phil.
[193] Ap.Stob.

Serm.
[194] Laert.
[195] According to Clinton's chronology, viz., one year after the legislation of Draco.