comely; and it is not gold or diamonds or scarlet robes that make her so, but her dignity, her correct conduct, and her modesty.
§ xxvii. Those who sacrifice to Hera as goddess of marriage,171 do not burn the gall with the other parts of the victim, but when they have drawn it throw it away beside the altar: the lawgiver thus hinting that gall and rage have no place in marriage. For the austerity of a matron should be, like that of wine, wholesome and pleasant, not bitter as aloes, or like a drug.
§ xxviii. Plato advised Xenocrates, a man rather austere but in all other respects a fine fellow, to sacrifice to the Graces. I think also that a chaste wife needs the graces with her husband that, as Metrodorus said, "she may live agreeably with him, and not be bad-tempered because she is chaste." For neither should the frugal wife neglect neatness, nor the virtuous one neglect to make herself attractive, for peevishness makes a wife's good conduct disagreeable, as untidiness makes one disgusted with simplicity.
§ xxix. The wife who is afraid to laugh and jest with her husband, lest she should appear bold and wanton, resembles one that will not anoint herself with oil lest she should be thought to use cosmetics, and will not wash her face lest she should be thought to paint. We see also in the case of those poets and orators, that avoid a popular illiberal and affected style, that they artificially endeavour to move and sway their audience by the facts, and by a skilful arrangement of them, and by their gestures. Consequently a matron will do well to avoid and repudiate over-preciseness meretriciousness and pomposity, and to use tact in her dealings with her husband in every-day life, accustoming him to a combination of pleasure and decorum. But if a wife be by nature austere and apathetic, and no lover of pleasure, the husband must make the best of it, for, as Phocion said, when Antipater enjoined on him an action neither honourable nor becoming, "You cannot have me as a friend and flatterer both," so he must say to himself about his strict and austere wife, "I cannot have in the same woman wife and mistress."
§ xxx. It was a custom among the Egyptian ladies not to wear shoes, that they might stay at home all day and not go abroad. But most of our women will only stay at home if you strip them of their golden shoes, and bracelets, and shoe-buckles, and purple robes, and pearls.
§ xxxi. Theano, as she was putting on her shawl, displayed her arm, and somebody observing, "What a handsome arm!" she replied, "But not common." So ought not even the speech, any more than the arm, of a chaste woman, to be common, for speech must be considered as it were the exposing of the mind, especially in the presence of strangers. For in words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the speaker.
§ xxxii. Phidias made a statue of Aphrodite at Elis, with one foot on a tortoise,172 as a symbol that women should stay at home and be silent. For the wife ought only to speak either to her husband, or by her husband, not being vexed if, like a flute-player, she speaks more decorously by another mouth-piece.
§ xxxiii. When rich men and kings honour philosophers, they really pay homage to themselves as well; but when philosophers pay court to the rich, they lower themselves without advancing their patrons. The same is the case with women. If they submit themselves to their husbands they receive praise, but if they desire to rule, they get less credit even than the husbands who submit to their rule. But the husband ought to rule his wife, not as a master does a chattel, but as the soul governs the body, by sympathy and goodwill. As he ought to govern the body by not being a slave to its pleasures and desires, so he ought to rule his wife by cheerfulness and complaisance.
§ xxxiv. The philosophers tell us that some bodies are composed of distinct parts, as a fleet or army; others of connected parts, as a house or ship; others united and growing together, as every animal is. The marriage of lovers is like this last class, that of those who marry for dowry or children is like the second class, and that of those who only sleep together is like the first class, who may be said to live in the same house, but in no other sense to live together. But, just as doctors tell us that liquids are the only things that thoroughly mix, so in married people there must be a complete union of bodies, wealth, friends, and relations. And thus the Roman legislator forbade married people to exchange presents with one another, not that they should not go shares with one another, but that they should consider everything as common property.
§ xxxv. At Leptis, a town in Libya, it is the custom for the bride the day after marriage to send to her mother-in-law's house for a pipkin, who does not lend her one, but says she has not got one, that from the first the daughter-in-law may know her mother-in-law's stepmotherly mind,173 that if afterwards she should be harsher still, she should be prepared for it and not take it ill. Knowing this the wife ought to guard against any cause of offence, for the bridegroom's mother is jealous of his affection to his wife. But there is one cure for this condition of mind, to conciliate privately the husband's affection, and not to divert or diminish his love for his mother.
§ xxxvi. Mothers seem to love their sons best as able to help them, and fathers their daughters as needing their help; perhaps also it is in compliment to one another, that each prefers the other sex in their children, and openly favours it. This, however, is a matter perhaps of little importance. But it looks very nice in the wife to show greater respect to her husband's parents than to her own, and if anything unpleasant has happened to confide it to them rather than to her own people. For trust begets trust,174 and love love.
§ xxxvii. The generals of the Greeks in Cyrus's army ordered their men to receive the enemy silently if they came up shouting, but if they came up silently to rush out to meet them with a shout. So sensible wives, in their husband's tantrums, are quiet when they storm, but if they are silent and sullen talk them round and appease them.
§ xxxviii. Rightly does Euripides175 censure those who introduce the lyre at wine-parties, for music ought to be called in to assuage anger and grief, rather than to enervate the voluptuous still more than before. Think, therefore, those in error who sleep together for pleasure, but when they have any little difference with one another sleep apart, and do not then more than at any other time invoke Aphrodite, who is the best physician in such cases, as the poet, I ween, teaches us, where he introduces Hera, saying:
"Their long-continued strife I now will end, For to the bed of love I will them send."176
§ xxxix. Everywhere and at all times should husband and wife avoid giving one another cause of offence, but most especially when they are in bed together. The woman who was in labour and had a bad time said to those that urged her to go to bed, "How shall the bed cure me, which was the very cause of this trouble?"177 And those differences and quarrels which the bed generates will not easily be put an end to at any other time or place.
§ xl. Hermione seems to speak the truth where she says:
"The visits of bad women ruined me."178
But this case does not happen naturally, but only when dissension and jealousy has made wives open not only their doors but their ears to such women. But that is the very time when a sensible wife will shut her ears more than at any other time, and be especially on her guard against whisperers, that fire may not be added to fire,179 and remember the remark of Philip, who, when his friends tried to excite him against the Greeks, on the ground that they were treated well and yet reviled him, answered, "What will they do then, if I treat them ill?" Whenever, then, calumniating
