Legend says Confucius once went to Laozi for advice.
The historian Sima Qian writes that the young Confucius asked the Zhou archivist about ritual and afterwards likened him to a dragon beyond understanding.
6th century BC · 5th century BC
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- 600 BC The tale that Phoenicians sailed around Africa c. 600 BC is believable thanks to a detail Herodotus rejected: Pharaoh Necho II's sailors said the Sun was on their right.
- 563 BC · 551 BC · 530 BC By traditional dating, the Buddha, Confucius and Pythagoras were contemporaries: all three lived in the 6th century BC.
- 550 BC “Rich as Croesus” refers to the king who first struck coins of pure gold and pure silver.
- 547 BC The oracle did not lie to Croesus: a great empire did fall, his own. Herodotus says Delphi told the Lydian king that if he attacked Cyrus he would destroy a great empire.
- 539 BC The idiom 'the writing on the wall' comes from the fall of Babylon.
- 530 BC Pythagoras is said to have forbidden his followers to eat fava beans.