Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

...it is easy to become wealthy, having foreseen a future abundance, he rented the olive presses and acquired for himself innumerable sums of money. He said that water is the principle of all things, and that the world is animate and full of demons. They say that he was the first to discover the seasons of the year and their successions, and that he divided it into three hundred and sixty-five days. He used no teacher, except that, having traveled there, he kept company with the Egyptian priests. Furthermore, Hieronymus recorded in memory that he measured the pyramids by observing the shadow when they are of equal magnitude to us. He also lived with Thrasybulus, the tyrant of the Milesians, as Mynies says. The stories that are told about the tripod found by fishermen and dedicated to the wise men by the Milesian commoners are well-known. For they say that certain Ionian youths bought a cast of the net from fishermen; when the tripod was subsequently caught and hauled up, a dispute arose, which was not settled until it was sent to Delphi by the Milesians and this response was received from the god:

Ἔκγονε Μιλήτου τρίποδος πέρι Φοῖβον ἐρωτᾷς
Τίς σοφίῃ πάντων πρῶτος, τούτῳ τρίποδ' αὐδῶ.

that is,

Milesian offspring, you ask Phoebus about the tripod;
To him who has the first wisdom, to him I assign the tripod.

It is therefore given to Thales, and Thales gives it to another, and again one to another, until it reached Solon. He, asserting that wisdom is the first of the gods, sent it to Delphi. Callimachus relates these things differently in his iambics, having received them from Leander of Miletus. For [he says] a certain Bathycles the Arcadian left a bowl and ordered it to be given to the wisest, and it was given to Thales, and again [after passing] through the circle [of wise men], it returned to Thales, who sent it to Apollo Didymaeus, saying thus, according to Callimachus: