Can you tell me what that means?’ ‘No, and I don’t want [Sidenote: C] to be told either,’ answered Cleodorus. ‘And yet,’ said Aesop, ‘no one is so familiar with the thing, or does it so well, as you. If you deny it, cupping-glasses[32] will bear me out.’ At this Cleodorus laughed, for he made more use of cupping-glasses than any medical man of the day, and the estimation in which that remedy is held is especially due to him. ‘I beg to ask, Periander,’ said Mnesiphilus the Athenian, a close friend and admirer of Solon, ‘that the conversation, like the wine, shall not be limited to wealth or rank, but shall be put on a democratic footing and made to concern all alike. In what has just been [Sidenote: D] said about wealth and kingship there is nothing for us commoners. We think, therefore, that you should take a government with equal rights, and each of you again contribute some opinion, beginning once more with Solon.’ It was decided that this should be done. First came Solon. ‘Well, Mnesiphilus, you, like every other Athenian, have heard what opinion I hold about such a government. But if you desire to hear it again now, it seems to me that a community is in the soundest condition, and its popular government most securely maintained, _when the wrongdoer is accused and punished quite as much by those who [Sidenote: E] have not been wronged as by the man that has_.’ The second to speak was Bias, who said that the best popular government is ‘_that in which every one fears the law as he would a despot_.’ Next came Thales with ‘_that in which there are no citizens either too rich or too poor_.’ Anacharsis followed with ‘_that in which, while everything else is treated as equal, superiority is determined by virtue and inferiority by vice_.’ In the fifth place Cleobulus affirmed that a democracy is most soundly conducted ‘_when its public men are more afraid of blame than of the law_‘. Sixth, Pittacus: ‘_Where the bad are not permitted to hold office and the [Sidenote: F] good are not permitted to decline it._’ Last of all Chilon expressed the view that the best free government is ‘_that which pays least attention to the orators and most to the laws_.’ Periander once more summed up at the end by saying that they all appeared to him to be praising ‘that democratic government which most resembled an aristocratic.’