His maxims are singularly Dorian--they breathe reverence of the dead and suspicion of the living.

"Love," he said (if we may take the authority of Aulus Gellius, fl.

B.C.

586), "as if you might hereafter hate, and hate as if you might hereafter love." Another favourite sentence of his was, "to a surety loss is at hand." [189] A third, "we try gold by the touchstone.

Gold is the touchstone of the mind." Bias, of Priene in Ionia, is quoted, in Herodotus, as the author of an advice to the Ionians to quit their country, and found a common city in Sardinia (B.C.