Miscellanies 5.8.44

Not only the most rational of the Egyptians, but also as many of the other barbarians as desired philosophy, emulated the symbolic form. They say, at any rate, that Idanthyrsus too, king of the Scythians, as Pherecydes of Syros relates, threatening war on Darius when he had crossed the Ister, sent a symbol instead of letters: a mouse, a frog, a bird, an arrow, a plow. There being perplexity about these, as was to be expected, Orontopatas the commander of a thousand said that they would surrender the rule, inferring the dwellings from the mouse, the waters from the frog, the air from the bird, the weapons from the arrow, and the land from the plow. But Xiphodres interpreted it the opposite way; for he said: “Unless we fly up like birds, or dive into the earth like mice, or into the water like frogs, we will not escape their arrows; for we are not masters of the land.” And they say that Anacharsis the Scythian, when sleeping, held his genitals with his left hand and his mouth with his right, hinting that one must master both, but that it is greater to master the tongue than pleasure.