1. Solon bade the bride eat a piece of quince before coming to the
bridegroom’s arms—apparently an enigmatical suggestion that, as a first
requirement, a pleasant and inviting impression should be gathered from
an agreeable mouth and speech.
2. In Boeotia, after veiling the bride, they crown her with a wreath of
thorny asparagus. As that plant yields the sweetest eating from among
the roughest prickles, so a bride, if the groom does not run away in
disgust because he finds her difficult and vexatious at first, will
afford him a sweet and gentle companionship. One who shows no patience
with the girl’s first [Sidenote: E] bickerings is as bad as those who
let the ripe grapes go because once they were sour. Many a young bride
is affected in the same way. First experiences disgust her with the
bridegroom, and she makes as great a mistake as if, after enduring the
sting of the bee, she were to abandon the honeycomb.
3. It is especially at the beginning that married people should beware
of quarrel and friction. Let them note how vessels which have been
mended will at first easily pull to pieces on the slightest occasion,
but as time goes on and they become solid at the seams, it is as much as
fire and iron can do to separate [Sidenote: F] the parts.
4. Fire is readily kindled in chaff, dry rushes, or hare’s fur, but
quickly goes out unless it gets a further hold upon something capable
both of keeping it in and feeding it. So with that fierce blaze of
passion which is produced in the newly-married by physical enjoyment.
You must not rely upon it nor expect it to last, unless it is built
round the moral character, gets a hold upon your rational part, and so
obtains a permanent vitality.
5. Doctoring the water is no doubt a quick and easy way of [Sidenote:
139] catching fish, but it renders them bad and uneatable. So when women
work artificially upon their husbands with philtres and spells, and
control them by the agency of pleasure, they have but crazy simpletons
and dotards for their partners. While Circe derived no good from the men
she had bewitched, and made no use of them when turned into swine and
asses, she found the greatest pleasure in the rational companionship of
the wise Odysseus.
6. A woman who is more desirous of ruling a foolish husband than of
obeying a wise one, is like a traveller who would rather lead a blind
man than follow one who possesses sight and knowledge.
[Sidenote: B] 7. Why should people disbelieve that Pasiphae, though
consort to a king, fell in love with an ox, when they see that some
women find a strict and continent husband wearisome, and prefer to live
with one who is as much a mass of ungoverned sensuality as a dog or a
goat?
8. When a rider is too weak or effeminate to vault upon a horse, he
teaches the animal itself to bend its legs and crouch. In the same way
some men who marry high-born or wealthy women, instead of improving
themselves, put indignities upon their wives, in the belief that they
will be more easily ruled when humbled. The proper course is, while
using the rein, to maintain the dignity of the wife, as one would the
full height of the horse.
[Sidenote: C] 9. When the moon is at a distance from the sun, we see it
bright and luminous. When it comes near him, it fades and is lost to
view. With a properly conducted woman it is the contrary. She should be
most visible when with her husband; in his absence she should keep at
home and out of sight.
10. Herodotus was wrong in saying that when a woman lays aside her tunic
she lays aside her modesty. On the contrary, a chaste wife puts on
modesty in its place. Between married persons the token of greatest
regard is greatest modesty.
11. If two notes are taken in accord, the lower of the two is [Sidenote:
D] the dominant. So, though every action in a well-conducted house is
performed by both parties in tune, it will reveal the husband’s
leadership and priority of choice.
12. The Sun vanquished the North Wind. When the wind endeavoured to take
off the man’s cloak by violence and blowing a gale, he only tightened
his mantle the more and held it the closer. But when, after the wind,
the sun became hot, the man began to grow warm. When at last he
sweltered, he took off not only his cloak but his tunic. The parable
applies to the generality of women. When their husbands take violent
measures to do away with extravagant indulgence, they show [Sidenote: E]
fight and temper; but if you reason with them, they give it up peaceably
and practise moderation.
13. Cato expelled from the Senate a man who had kissed his own wife in
the presence of his daughter. This, perhaps, was too severe a step. But
if—as is the case—it is unseemly to be fondling and kissing and
embracing each other in company, it is surely more unseemly to be
scolding and quarrelling in company, and, while treating your
love-passages as a sacred secret between you and your wife, to make an
open display of fault-finding [Sidenote: F] and reproach.
14. A mirror,[37] though decorated with gold and precious stones, is of
no use unless it shows you your form true to life. Similarly there is no
advantage in a rich wife, if her conduct does not represent that of her
husband and harmonize with it in character. If the reflection which it
offers is glum when you are joyful, but wears a merry grin when you are
gloomy and distressed, the mirror is faulty and bad. A wife is a poor
thing and out of place if she is in the dumps when her husband is
disposed for frolic or love-making, but is all fun and laughter when he
is serious. In the former case she is disagreeable; in [Sidenote: 140]
the latter, she slights you. Geometers tell us that lines and surfaces
make no movement by themselves, but only in conjunction with the bodies
to which they belong. In the same way a woman should be free from
peculiar states of mind of her own, but should act as the husband’s
partner in his earnestness and his jest, in his preoccupation and his
laughter.
15. A man who dislikes to see his wife eating with him, teaches her to
satisfy her appetite when she gets by herself. Similarly one who is
never a merry companion to her, nor shares in her sport and laughter,
teaches her to look for private pleasures apart from him.
[Sidenote: B] 16. When the Persian kings are dining or feasting, their
legitimate wives sit at their side. But when they wish to amuse
themselves or get tipsy, they send those wives away and summon their
minstrel-women and concubines. The practice is a right one, at least to
the extent that they do not permit their wives to take part in wanton
and licentious scenes. So, if a private man, who lacks self-control or
good-breeding in his pleasures, is guilty of a lapse with a common woman
or a menial, the wife should not be indignant and resentful, but should
reflect that, out of respect for her, he finds some other woman to share
his riot and lasciviousness.
[Sidenote: C] 17. When kings are fond of music, they make many
musicians; when of learning, learned men; when of athletics, gymnasts.
So when the love of a husband is for the person, his wife will be all
for dress; when for pleasure, she becomes lewd and wanton; when for
goodness and virtue, she shows herself discreet and chaste.
18. When a Lacedaemonian girl was once asked whether she had already
embraced a man, she answered, ‘No, indeed; but _he_ has embraced _me_.’
Such, I believe, is the right attitude for a lady—not to shun or dislike
caresses, when the husband begins them, nor yet to begin them of her own
accord. The one course is bold and immodest, the other disdainful and
[Sidenote: D] unaffectionate.
19. The woman ought not to possess private friends, but to share those
of the man. But first and greatest are the gods, and it is therefore
right for the wife to reverence or acknowledge only those gods who are
recognized by the husband. Her street-door should be kept shut to
out-of-the-way forms of worship and alien superstitions. No deity finds
gratification in ceremonies which a woman performs in secret and by
stealth.
20. Plato holds that a community is in a state of blissful well-being
when the expressions ‘_mine_’ and ‘_not mine_’ are scarcely ever heard,
inasmuch as the citizens enjoy, as far as [Sidenote: E] possible, the
common use of everything worth considering. Much more ought such
language to be abolished from the married state. In the same way,
however, in which medical men tell us that a blow on the left side
produces an answering sensation in the right, it is proper for a wife to
sympathize with her husband’s concerns and the husband with the wife’s.
In this way, just as ropes, when interwoven, lend each other strength,
so, through each party reciprocating the other’s goodwill, the
partnership will be maintained by both combined. Nature blends us
through the body in such a way as to take [Sidenote: F] a portion from
each, and by commingling produce an offspring common to both, so that
neither can define or distinguish an ‘own’ part from ‘another’s’. The
same sort of partnership between married persons should assuredly exist
in respect of money also. They should pour it all into a single fund,
and blend it in such a way that they never think of one part as ‘own’
and one as ‘another’s’, but treat it all as ‘own’ and none of it as
‘another’s’. And as we call a mixture ‘wine’, though it may contain a
greater proportion of water, so the property of the house should be said
to belong to the man, even though the wife may contribute the larger
share.
21. Helen loved wealth, and Paris loved pleasure: Odysseus was wise, and
Penelope discreet. Hence the union of the latter [Sidenote: 141] pair
was happy and enviable, while that of the former brought upon Greeks and
Asiatics an ‘Iliad of Woes’.
22. When the Roman was admonished by his friends for having divorced a
wife who was chaste, rich, and beautiful, he stretched out his shoe and
remarked: ‘Yes, and this looks fine and new, but no one knows where it
chafes me.’ The wife must not rely upon her dowry, her birth, or her
beauty. The matters in which she touches her husband most closely are
conversation, character, and companionship. Instead of making these
harsh and vexatious day after day, she must render them [Sidenote: B]
compatible, soothing, and grateful. Physicians are more afraid of fevers
which spring from vague causes gradually accumulating, than of those for
which there is a great and manifest reason. So it is these little,
continual, daily frictions between man and wife, which the world knows
nothing of, that do most to create the rifts which ruin married life.
23. King Philip was once enamoured of a Thessalian woman who was charged
with bewitching him. Olympias thereupon became eager to get this person
into her power. When, upon presenting herself, she not only turned out
to be a handsome woman, but spoke with considerable nobility and good
sense, [Sidenote: C] Olympias said: ‘Those calumnies are all nonsense!
Your witchcraft lies in yourself.’ How irresistible a thing is a married
and lawful wife, if, by treating everything—dowry, birth, philtres, the
very girdle[38] of Aphrodite—as lying in herself, she conquers affection
by means of character and virtue!
24. On another occasion, when a youthful courtier had married a handsome
woman of bad repute, Olympias remarked, ‘The fellow has no judgement;
otherwise he would not have married with his eyes.’ Marriage should not
be made with the eyes; neither should it with the fingers, as it is in
the case of some, who reckon up the amount of the dower, instead of
calculating the companionable quality, of the wife they are [Sidenote:
D] marrying.
25. To young men who are fond of looking at themselves in the mirror
Socrates recommended that the ugly should correct their defects by
virtue, while the handsome should avoid spoiling their beauty by vice.
It is a good thing for the married woman also, while she is holding the
mirror, to talk to herself, and, if she is plain, to ask, ‘And what if I
show myself indiscreet?’ if beautiful, ‘And what if I show myself
discreet as well?’ The plain woman may pride herself on being loved for
her character, and the handsome woman on being loved more for her
character than her beauty.
26. When the Sicilian despot sent Lysander’s daughters a set of costly
mantles and chains, he refused to accept them. ‘These bits of
ornaments,’ said he, ‘will rather take from my [Sidenote: E] daughters’
beauty than set it off.’ Lysander, however, was anticipated by Sophocles
in the lines:
_Nay, ’twould not seem, poor fool, to beautify,
But to unbeautify, and prove thee wanton._
As Crates used to say, ‘Adornment is that which adorns,’ and that which
adorns is that which adds to a woman’s seemliness. This is not done by
gold or jewels or scarlet, but by whatever invests her with the badges
of dignity, decorum, and modesty.
27. In sacrificing to Hera as goddess of marriage, the gall is not
burned with the other portions of the sacrifice, but is [Sidenote: F]
taken out and thrown down at the side of the altar—an indirect
injunction of the legislator that gall and anger should have no place in
the married state. The austerity of the lady of the house, like the
dryness of wine, should be wholesome and palatable, not bitter like
aloes or unpleasant like a drug.
28. Xenocrates being somewhat harsh in character, though otherwise a
high type of man, Plato recommended him to _sacrifice to the Graces_.
Now I take it that a woman of strict morals stands in special need of
the graces in dealing with her [Sidenote: 142] husband, so that—as
Metrodorus used to say—she may live with him on pleasant terms and not
‘in a temper because she is chaste’. A woman should no more forget to be
amiable because she is faithful, than to be neat because she is thrifty.
Decorum in a woman is rendered as disagreeable by harshness as frugality
is by sluttishness.
29. A wife who is afraid to laugh and joke with her husband for fear of
seeming bold and wanton, is as bad as the woman who, from fear of being
thought to use ointments on her head, does not even oil it,[39] and, to
avoid seeming to rouge her face, does not even wash it. We find that
when poets and orators avoid appealing to the vulgar by bad taste and
affectation in [Sidenote: B] respect of their diction, they practise
every art to attract and stir the hearer with their matter, their
treatment, and their moral quality. So the lady of the house, because
she avoids and deprecates—as she is quite right to do—extravagant or
meretricious demonstration, ought all the more to bring the graces of
character and conduct into play in dealing with her husband, thus
habituating him to proper ways, but in a pleasurable manner. If,
however, a wife shows herself strait-laced and rigidly austere, her
husband must put the best face upon it. When Antipater required Phocion
to perform an improper and [Sidenote: C] degrading action, he answered,
‘I cannot serve you both as your friend and your toady.’ In the same
way, when a woman is staid and strait-laced, our reflection should be,
‘The same woman cannot behave to me as both a wife and a mistress.’
30. By a national custom the Egyptian women wore no shoes, so that they
might keep at home all day. In the case of most women, to deprive them
of gold-worked shoes, bangles, anklets, purple, and pearls, is to make
them stay indoors.
31. Theano, in putting on her mantle, once showed a glimpse of her arm.
Upon some one saying, ‘A beautiful forearm!’ she retorted, ‘But not for
the public!’ A well-conducted woman will keep, not only her forearm, but
her speech, from [Sidenote: D] publicity. She will be as shy and
cautious about her utterances to the outside world as if they were an
exposure of her person, inasmuch as, when she talks, they are a
revelation of feelings, character, and disposition.
32. Pheidias, in representing the Elean Aphrodite with her foot upon a
tortoise, meant women to take it as a symbol of home-keeping and
silence. A woman should talk either to, or through the medium of, her
husband; nor should she resent it if, like a player on the clarinet, she
finds a more impressive utterance through another tongue than through
her own.
33. When rich or royal persons pay respect to a philosopher, they do
honour both to themselves and to him. But when a philosopher pays court
to rich people, he is not conferring [Sidenote: E] distinction upon
them, but lowering his own. The same is the case with women. By
submission to their husbands they win regard; by seeking to govern them
they demean themselves worse than the men so governed. Meanwhile it is
only right that the husband, in controlling the wife, should not be like
an owner dealing with a chattel, but like the mind dealing with the
body—sympathetic with the sympathy of organic union. It is possible to
care for the body without being a slave to its pleasures and desires,
and it is possible to rule a wife and yet do things to please and
gratify her.
34. Compound objects are classified by philosophers as follows. In some
the parts are distinct, as in a fleet or army. [Sidenote: F] In some
they are conjoined, as in a house or ship. In others they form an
organic unity, as in all living creatures. We may say much the same of
marriage. The marriage of love is the ‘organic unity’; the marriage for
a dowry or for children is that of persons ‘conjoined’; marriage without
sharing the same couch is that of persons ‘distinct’, who may be said to
[Sidenote: 143] dwell together, but not to live together. With persons
marrying, there should be a mutual blending of bodies, means, friends,
and relations, in the same way as, according to the scientists, when
liquids are mixed, the mixture runs through the whole. When the Roman
legislator forbade married couples to exchange presents, he did not mean
that they should not impart to each other, but that they should look
upon everything as joint property.
35. At Leptis in Africa it is a traditional custom for the bride, on the
day after marriage, to send to the bridegroom’s mother to borrow a pot.
The latter refuses, saying she has none. The intention is that the bride
may realize from the first the ‘step-mother’ attitude of her
mother-in-law, so that, if anything more disagreeable happens
afterwards, she may not be vexed or irritated. The wife should
understand this fact and apply [Sidenote: B] treatment to its cause,
which is, that the mother is jealous of her son’s affections. There is
but one treatment for this state of mind. While winning the special
affection of her husband for herself, she must avoid detaching or
lessening his affection for his mother.
36. Mothers appear to be more fond of their sons, because those sons are
able to help them, and fathers of their daughters, because daughters
need their help. Maybe also it is out of compliment to each other that
both parties desire to be seen making much of that which is more akin to
the other. This, perhaps, is a trait of no importance, but there is
another which is charming. I mean, when the wife’s respect is seen to
incline rather to the husband’s parents than to her own, and when,
[Sidenote: C] in case of anything troubling her, she refers it to them
and conceals it from her own people. If you are thought to trust, you
are trusted; if you are thought to love, you are loved.
37. The Greeks who accompanied Cyrus received the following order from
their commanders: ‘If the enemy come shouting to the attack, await them
in silence; if they come in silence, charge to meet them with a shout.’
When a husband has his fits of anger, if he raises his voice, a sensible
wife keeps quiet; if he is silent, she soothes him by talking to him in
a coaxing way.
38. Euripides is right in blaming those who have the lyre [Sidenote: D]
played to them at their wine. Music is more properly called in to cure
anger and grief than to encourage further abandonment on the part of
those who are taking their pleasure. So I would have you believe that it
is a wrong principle to share the same bed for the sake of pleasure, and
yet, when you are angry or fall out, to sleep apart. That is exactly the
time to call in the Goddess of Love, who is the best physician for such
cases. This is practically the teaching of the poet, when he makes Hera
say:
_And their tangled strife will I loosen,
When to their couch I bring them, to meet in love and in union._
[Sidenote: E] 39. At all times and everywhere a wife should avoid
offending the husband, and a husband the wife; but especially should
they beware of doing so when together at night. In the story, the wife,
in the vexation of her throes, used to say to those who were putting her
to bed: ‘How can this couch cure a trouble which befell me upon it?’ So
quarrels, recriminations, and tempers which are begotten in the chamber
are not easily got over in another place or at another time.