Now that the nuptial ceremonies are over, and that the priestess of
Ceres has joined you both together in the bands of matrimony according
to the custom of the country, I thought a short discourse of this
nature might not be either unacceptable or unseasonable, but rather
serve as a kind epithalamium to congratulate your happy conjunction;
more especially, since there can be nothing more useful in conjugal
society than the observance of wise and wholesome precepts, suitable to
the harmony of matrimonial converse. For among the variety of musical
moods and measures there is one which is called Hippothoros, a sort
of composition to the flute and hautboy, made use of to encourage and
provoke stallions to cover mares. But philosophy being furnished with
many noble and profitable discourses, there is not any one subject that
deserves a more serious study than that of wedlock, whereby they who
are engaged in a long community of bed and board are more steadfastly
united in affection, and made more pliable one to another in humor and
condition. To this purpose, having reduced under several short heads
and similes some certain instructions and admonitions which you, as
tutored up in philosophy, have frequently already heard, I send you the
collection as a present, beseeching the Muses so with their presence
to assist the Goddess Venus, that the harmony of your mutual society
and complacency in domestic diligences may outcry the melodious
concords of lute or harp, while you live united together by reason and
philosophy. Therefore it was that the ancients placed the statue of
Venus by that of Mercury, to signify that the pleasures of matrimony
chiefly consist in the sweetness of conversation. They also set the
Graces and Suadela, the Goddess of Eloquence, together, to show that
the married couple were to act only by persuasion, and not to use the
violences of wrangling and contention.
1. Solon advised that the bride should eat a quince before she entered
the nuptial sheets; intimating thereby, in my opinion, that the man
was to expect his first pleasures from the breath and speech of his
new-married bed-fellow.
2. In Boeotia it is the custom, when they veil the virgin bride, to set
upon her head a chaplet of wild asparagus, which from a thorny stalk
affords a most delicious fruit, to let us understand that a new-married
woman, discreetly brooking at the beginning the first distastes of
marriage restraints, grows yieldingly complaisant at length, and makes
conforming wedlock a happiness to each. And indeed such husbands
who cannot bear with the little disdains and first froppishness of
imprudent youth are like to those that choose the sour grapes and leave
to others the ripe delicious clusters. On the other side, those young
ladies that take a disdain to their husbands by reason of their first
debates and encounters may be well compared to those that patiently
endure the sting but fling away the honey.
3. It especially behooves those people who are newly married to avoid
the first occasions of discord and dissension; considering that vessels
newly formed are subject to be bruised and put out of shape by many
slight accidents, but when the materials come once to be settled and
hardened by time, nor fire nor sword will hardly prejudice the solid
substance.
4. Fire takes speedy hold of straw or hare’s fur, but soon goes out
again, unless fed with an addition of more fuel. Thus that same love,
whose flames are nourished only by heat of youth and looser charms of
beauty, seldom proves of long continuance or grows to wedlock maturity,
unless it have taken a deep root in conformity of manners, and mutual
affection be enlivened by the intermixture of souls as well as bodies,
while prudence and discretion feed the noble flame.
5. They who bait their hooks with intoxicated drugs with little pains
surprise the hungry fish, but then they prove unsavory to the taste and
dangerous to eat. Thus women that by the force of charms and philters
endeavor to subdue their husbands to the satisfaction of their pleasure
become at length the wives of madmen, sots, and fools. For they whom
the sorceress Circe had enchanted, being then no better than swine and
asses, were no longer able to please or do her service. But she loved
Ulysses entirely, whose prudence avoided her venomous intoxications and
rendered his conversation highly grateful.
6. They who rather choose to be the mistresses of senseless fools than
the obedient wives of wise and sober husbands are like those people
that prefer misguidance of the blind before the conduct of them that
can see and know the way.
7. They will not believe that Pasiphae, the consort of a prince, could
ever be enamored of a bull, and yet themselves are so extravagant as to
abandon the society of their husbands,—men of wisdom, temperance, and
gravity,—and betake themselves to the bestial embraces of those who are
given wholly to riot and debauchery as if they were dogs or goats.
8. Some men, either unable or unwilling to mount themselves into their
saddles through infirmity or laziness, teach their horses to fall upon
their knees, and in that posture to receive their riders. In like
manner there are some persons who, having married young ladies not
less considerable for the nobility of their birth than their wealthy
dowries, take little care themselves to improve the advantages of such
a splendid conjunction, but with a severe moroseness labor to depress
and degrade their wives, proud of the mastery and vaunting in domestic
tyranny. Whereas in this case it becomes a man to use the reins of
government with as equal regard to the quality and dignity of the woman
as to the stature of the horse.
9. We behold the moon then shining with a full and glorious orb, when
farthest distant from the sun; but, as she warps back again to meet
her illustrious mate, the nearer she makes her approach, the more she
is eclipsed until no longer seen. Quite otherwise, a woman ought to
display the charms of her virtue and the sweetness of her disposition
in her husband’s presence, but in his absence to retire to silence and
reservedness at home.
10. Nor can we approve the saying of Herodotus, that a woman lays
aside her modesty with her shift. For surely then it is that a chaste
woman chiefly vails herself with bashfulness, when, in the privacies
of matrimonial duties, excess of love and maiden reverence become the
secret signals and testimonies of mutual affection.
11. As in musical concords, when the upper strings are so tuned as
exactly to accord, the base always gives the tone; so in well-regulated
and well-ordered families, all things are carried on with the
harmonious consent and agreement of both parties, but the conduct and
contrivance chiefly redounds to the reputation and management of the
husband.
12. It is a common proverb, that the sun is too strong for the north
wind; for the more the wind ruffles and strives to force a man’s upper
garment from his back, the faster he holds it, and the closer he wraps
it about his shoulders. But he who so briskly defended himself from
being plundered by the wind, when once the sun begins to scald the air,
all in a dropping sweat is then constrained to throw away not only
his flowing garment but his tunic also. This puts us in mind of the
practice of most women, who, being limited by their husbands in their
extravagances of feasting and superfluities of habit, presently fill
the house with noise and uproar; whereas, if they would but suffer
themselves to be convinced by reason and soft persuasion, they would of
themselves acknowledge their vanity and submit to moderation.
13. Cato ejected a certain Roman out of the senate for kissing his
wife in the presence of his daughter. It is true, the punishment was
somewhat too severe; but if kissing and colling and hugging in the
sight of others be so unseemly, as indeed it is, how much more indecent
is it to chide and brawl and maunder one at another while strangers
are in company? If lawful familiarity and caresses between man and
wife are not to be allowed but in their private retirements, shall the
bitter interchanges and loud discoveries of invective and inconsiderate
passion be thought an entertainment pleasingly proper for unconcerned
and public ears?
14. As there is little or no use to be made of a mirror, though in a
frame of gold enchased with all the sparkling variety of the richest
gems, unless it render back the true similitude of the image it
receives; so is there nothing of profit in a wealthy dowry, unless the
conditions, the temper, the humor of the wife be conformable to the
natural disposition and inclination of the husband, and he sees the
virtues of his own mind exactly represented in hers. Or, if a fair and
beautiful mirror that makes a sad and pensive visage look jocund and
gay, or a wanton or smiling countenance show pensive and mournful,
is therefore presently rejected as of no value; thus may not she be
thought an angry, peevish, and importunate woman, that louts and
lowers upon the caresses of a husband, and when he courts the pastime
of her affections, entertains him with frumps and taunts, but when she
finds him serious in business, allures him then with her unseasonable
toyings to pleasure and enjoyment? For the one is an offence of
impertinency, the other a contempt of her husband’s kindness. But,
as geometricians affirm that lines and surfaces are not moved of
themselves, but according to the motions of the bodies to which they
belong, so it behooves a woman to challenge no peculiar passion or
affection as her own, but to share with her husband in business, in his
recreations, in his cares, and in his mirth.
15. As they who are offended to see their wives eat and drink freely
in their company do but whet their appetites to glut and gormandize in
corners by themselves; so they who refuse to frolic in retirement with
their wives, or to let them participate of their private pastimes and
dalliances, do but instruct them to cater for their own pleasures and
delights.
16. The Persian kings, when they contain themselves within the limits
of their usual banquets, suffer their married wives to sit down at
their tables; but when they once design to indulge the provocations
of amorous heats and wine, then they send away their wives, and call
for their concubines, their gypsies, and their songstresses, with
their lascivious tunes and wanton galliards. Wherein they do well, not
thinking it proper to debauch their wives with the tipsy frolics and
dissolute extravagances of their intemperance.
If therefore any private person, swayed by the unruly motions of his
incontinency, happen at any time to make a trip with a kind she-friend
or his wife’s chambermaid, it becomes not the wife presently to lower
and take pepper in the nose, but rather to believe that it was his
respect to her which made him unwilling she should behold the follies
of ebriety and foul intemperance.
17. Princes that be addicted to music increase the number of excellent
musicians; if they be lovers of learning, all men strive to excel in
reading and in eloquence; if given to martial exercises, a military
ardor rouses straight the drowsy sloth of all their subjects. Thus
husbands effeminately finical only teach their wives to paint and
polish themselves with borrowed lustre. The studious of pleasure render
them immodest and whorish. On the other side, men of serious, honest,
and virtuous conversations make sober, chaste, and prudent wives.
18. A young Lacedaemonian lass, being asked by an acquaintance of hers
whether she had yet embraced her husband, made answer, No; but that he
had embraced her. And after this manner, in my opinion, it behooves an
honest woman to behave herself toward her husband, never to shun nor
to disdain the caresses and dalliances of his amorous inclinations,
when he himself begins; but never herself to offer the first occasion
of provocation. For the one savors of impudent harlotry, the other
displays a female pride and imperiousness void of conjugal affection.
19. It behooves a woman not to make peculiar and private friendships of
her own, but to esteem only her husband’s acquaintance and familiars
as hers. Now as the Gods are our chiefest and most beneficial friends,
it behooves her to worship and adore only those Deities which her
husband reputes and reverences for such. But as for quaint opinions and
superstitious innovations, let them be exterminated from her outermost
threshold. For no sacrifices or services can be acceptable to the Gods,
performed by women, as it were, by stealth and in secret, without the
knowledge of the husband.
20. Plato asserts those cities to be the most happy and best regulated
where these expressions, “This is mine,” “This is not mine,” are
seldomest made use of. For that then the citizens enjoy in common, so
far as is convenient, those things that are of greatest importance. But
in wedlock those expressions are utterly to be abolished. For as the
physicians say that the right side being bruised or beaten communicates
its pain to the left; so indeed the husband ought to sympathize in the
sorrows and afflictions of the woman, and much more does it become the
wife to be sensible of the miseries and calamities of the husband;
to the intent that, as knots are made fast by knitting the bows of a
thread one within another, so the ligaments of conjugal society may
be strengthened by the mutual interchange of kindness and affection.
This Nature herself instructs us, by mixing us in our bodies; while
she takes a part from each, and then blending the whole together
produces a being common to both, to the end that neither may be able
to discern or distinguish what was belonging to another, or lay claim
to assured propriety. Therefore is community of estate and purses
chiefly requisite among married couples, whose principal aim it ought
to be to mix and incorporate their purchases and disbursements into
one substance, neither pretending to call this hers or that his, but
accounting all inseparably peculiar to both. However, as in a goblet
where the proportion of water exceeds the juice of the grape, yet still
we call the mixture wine; in like manner the house and estate must be
reputed the possession of the husband, although the woman brought the
chiefest part.
21. Helen was covetous, Paris luxurious. On the other side, Ulysses was
prudent, Penelope chaste. Happy therefore was the match between the
latter; but the nuptials of the former brought an Iliad of miseries as
well upon the Greeks as barbarians.
22. The question being put by some of his friends to a certain Roman,
why he had put away his wife, both sober beautiful, chaste, and rich,
the gentleman, putting forth his foot and showing his buskin, said:
Is not this a new, handsome, complete shoe?—yet no man but myself
knows where it pinches me. Therefore ought not a woman to boast either
of her dower, her parentage, or beauty; but in such things as most
delight a husband, pleasantness of converse, sweetness of disposition,
and briskness of humor, there to show nothing of harshness, nothing
distasteful, nothing offensive, but from day to day to study behavior
jocund, blithe, and conformable to his temper. For as physicians are
much more afraid of fevers that proceed from hidden causes, which
have been by little and little contracting for a long time together,
than those that receive their nourishment from apparent and manifest
unconcoctions; thus, if daily continued, the petty snubs and frumps
between man and wife, though perhaps unknown to others, are of that
force that above all things else they canker conjugal affection, and
destroy the pleasure of cohabitation.
23. King Philip so far doted on a fair Thessalian lady, that she
was suspected to have used some private arts of fascination towards
him. Wherefore Olympias labored to get the supposed sorceress into
her power. But when the queen had viewed her well, and duly examined
her beauty, beheld the graces of her deportment, and considered her
discourse bespake her no less than a person of noble descent and
education; Hence, fond suspicions, hence vainer calumnies! said she,
for I plainly find the charms which thou makest use of are in thyself.
Certainly therefore a lawful wife surpasses the common acceptation
of happiness when, without enhancing the advantages of her wealth,
nobility, and form, or vaunting the possession of Venus’s cestus
itself, she makes it her business to win her husband’s affection by her
virtue and sweetness of disposition.
24. Another time the same Olympias, understanding that a young courtier
had married a lady, beautiful indeed, but of no good report, said:
Sure, the Hotspur had little brains, otherwise he would never have
married with his eyes. For they are fools who in the choice of a wife
believe the report of their sight or fingers; like those who telling
out the portion in their thoughts take the woman upon content, never
examining what her conditions are, or whether she is proper to make him
a fit wife or no?
25. Socrates was wont to give this advice to young men that accustomed
themselves to their mirrors:—if ill-favored, to correct their deformity
by the practice of virtue; if handsome, not to blemish their outward
form with inward vice. In like manner, it would not be amiss for a
mistress of a family, when she holds her mirror in her hands, to
discourse her own thoughts:—if deformed, thus, Should I prove lewd
and wicked too?—on the other side, thus the fair one, What if chaste
beside? For it adds a kind of veneration to a woman not so handsome,
that she is more beloved for the perfections of her mind than the
outside graces of her body.
26. Dionysius, the tyrant of Sicily, sent several costly presents of
rich apparel, necklaces, and bracelets to the daughters of Lysander,
which however the father would never permit the virgins to accept,
saying: These gaudy presents will procure more infamy than honor to
my daughters. And indeed, before Lysander, Sophocles in one of his
tragedies had uttered the following sentence to the same effect:
Mistake not, silly wretch; this pompous trim
Rather disgraces than proclaims thee great,
And shows the rage of thy lascivious heat.
For, as Crates said, that is ornament which adorns; and that adorns
a woman which renders her more comely and decent. This is an honor
conferred upon her, not by the lustre of gold, the sparkling of
emeralds and diamonds, nor splendor of the purple tincture, but by the
real embellishments of gravity, discretion, humility, and modesty.
27. They who offer to Juno as the Goddess of Wedlock never consecrate
the gall with the other parts of the sacrifice, but having drawn
it forth, they cast it behind the altar. Which constitution of the
lawgiver fairly implies that all manner of passionate anger and
bitterness of reproach should be exterminated from the thresholds of
nuptial cohabitation. Not but that a certain kind of austerity becomes
the mistress of a family; which however should be like that of wine,
profitable and delightful, not like aloes, biting and medicinally
ungrateful to the palate.
28. Plato observing the morose and sour humor of Xenocrates, otherwise
a person of great virtue and worth, admonished him to sacrifice to
the Graces. In like manner, I am of opinion that it behooves a woman
of moderation to crave the assistance of the Graces in her behavior
towards her husband, thereby (according to the saying of Metrodorus) to
render their society mutually harmonious to each other, and to preserve
her from being waspishly proud, out of a conceit of her fidelity and
virtue. For it becomes not a frugal woman to be neglectful of decent
neatness, nor one who has great respect to her husband to refrain
complacency in her conversation; seeing that, as the over-rigid humor
of a wife renders her honesty irksome, so sluttery begets a hatred of
her sparing and pinching housewifery.
29. She who is afraid to laugh or to appear merry and gay before her
husband, for fear of waking his jealousy, may be said to resemble one
that forbears to anoint herself at all, lest she should be thought
to use unnecessary or harlotry perfumes, or that neglects to wash
her face, to avoid the suspicion of painting. Thus we find that
poets and orators, who desire to shun the tiring tediousness of a
low, vulgar, and drowsy style, ingeniously labor to detain and move
both their readers and their auditors by the quaintness of their
invention, grandeur of the subject, and lively representation of the
humors and conditions which they bring upon the stage. From whence a
discreet mistress of a family may likewise learn to avoid all manner of
over-nice curiosity and squeamish affectation, all excess of jollity
savoring of the courtesan, and every thing tending to profuse pomp; but
she will rather employ all her wit and art in exhibiting to her husband
all the graces of life and character, accustoming him to honesty and
decency joined with pleasure and delight. Nevertheless, if there be any
woman so severe and reserved by nature that no means can be found to
make her blithe and sportive, it behooves her husband to give way to
her temper; and, as Phocion answered Antipater, who commanded him to
do an ill thing that misbecame his quality, I cannot be thy friend and
flatter thee at one and the same time, in like manner ought a man to
rest satisfied with the virtues of a chaste wife, though her serious
disposition will not permit her to act the airy part of a mistress.
30. The Egyptian women were anciently never wont to wear shoes, to the
end they might accustom themselves to stay at home. But altogether
different is the humor of our women; for they, unless allowed their
jewels, their bracelets, and necklaces, their gaudy vestments, gowns,
and petticoats, all bespangled with gold, and their embroidered
buskins, will never stir abroad.
31. Theano, as she was dressing herself one morning in her chamber, by
chance discovered some part of her naked arm. Upon which, one of the
company crying out, Oh, what a lovely arm is there!—’Tis very true,
said she, but yet not common. Thus ought a chaste and virtuous woman
not only to keep her naked arms from open view, but to lock up her
very words and set a guard upon her lips, especially in the company of
strangers, since there is nothing which sooner discovers the qualities
and conditions of a woman than her discourse.
32. Phidias made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot upon the
shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman,
which are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to
her husband, or by her husband. Nor is she to take amiss the uttering
her mind in that manner, through another more proper organ.
33. Princes and kings honor themselves in giving honor to philosophers
and learned men. On the other side, great personages admired and
courted by philosophers are no way honored by their flatteries, which
are rather a prejudice and stain to the reputation of those that use
them. Thus it is with women, who in honoring and submitting to their
husbands win for themselves honor and respect, but when they strive to
get the mastery, they become a greater reproach to themselves than to
those that are so ignominiously henpecked. But then again, it behooves
a husband to control his wife, not as a master does his vassal, but as
the soul governs the body, with the gentle hand of mutual friendship
and reciprocal affection. For as the soul commands the body, without
being subject to its pleasures and inordinate desires, in like manner
should a man so exercise his authority over his wife, as to soften it
with complaisance and kind requital of her loving submission.
34. Philosophers assert that, of bodies which consist of several
parts, some are composed of parts distinct and separate, as a navy
or army royal; others of contiguous parts, as a house or a ship; and
others of parts united at the first conception, equally partaking of
life and motion and growing together, as are the bodies of all living
creatures. Thus, where people wed for pure affection, that marriage
may be said to resemble those bodies whose parts are solidly fixed
together. They who marry for the sake of great portions, or else
desirous of offspring, are like to bodies whose parts are contiguous
and cleave close to one another; and they who only bed together,
if there be any such, resemble bodies whose parts are distinct and
without dependency. Now, as physicians say that liquids are the only
bodies which most easily intermix without any difference of propriety
or respect one with another; so should it be said of people joined
together in matrimony, that there is a perfect mixture of bodies and
estates, of friends and relations. Therefore the Roman law prohibits
new married people from giving and receiving mutual presents one from
another; not that they should not participate one with another, but to
show that they were not to enjoy any thing but what they possess in
common.
35. In Leptis, a city of Libya, it was an ancient custom for the bride,
the next day after the nuptial solemnity, to send home to the mother of
the bridegroom to borrow a boiler, which she not only refused to lend,
but sent back word that she had none to spare; to the end that the
new married woman, having by that means tried the disposition of her
mother-in-law, if afterwards she found her humor peevish and perverse,
might with more patience brook her unkindness, as being no more
than what she expected. Rather it becomes the daughter to avoid all
occasions of distaste. For it is natural to some mothers to be jealous
that the wife deprives her of that filial tenderness which she expects
from her son. For which there is no better cure than for a wife so to
contrive the gaining of her husband’s love as not to lessen or withdraw
his affection from his mother.
36. It is generally observed that mothers are fondest of their sons, as
expecting from them their future assistance when they grow into years,
and that fathers are kindest to their daughters, as standing most in
need of their paternal succor. And perhaps, out of that mutual respect
which the man and his wife bear one to another, either of them would
seem to carry greater affection for that which is proper and familiar
to the other. But this pleasing controversy is easily reconciled. For
it becomes a woman to show the choicest of her respects and to be more
complaisant to the kindred of her husband than to her own; to make her
complaints to them, and conceal her discontents from her own relations.
For the trust which she reposes in them causes them to confide in her,
and her esteem of them increases their respects to her.
37. The commanders of the Grecian auxiliaries that marched in aid of
Cyrus gave these instructions to their soldiers, that, if their enemies
advanced whooping and hallowing to the combat, they should receive the
charge, observing an exact silence; but on the other side, if they
came on silently, then to rend the air with their martial shouts. Thus
prudent wives, when their husbands in the heat of their passion rant
and tear the house down, should make no returns, but quietly hold
their peace; but if they only frown out their discontents in moody
anger, then, with soft language and gently reasoning the case, they may
endeavor to appease and qualify their fury.
38. Rightly therefore are they reprehended by Euripides, who introduce
the harp and other instruments of music at their compotations. For
music ought rather to be made use of for the mitigation of wrath and
to allay the sorrows of mourning, not to heighten the voluptuousness
of those that are already drowned in jollity and delight. Believe
yourselves then to be in an error that sleep together for pleasure,
but when angry and at variance make two beds, and that never at that
time call to your assistance the Goddess Venus, who better than any
other knows how to apply a proper remedy to such distempers; as Homer
teaches us, where he brings in Juno using this expression:
Your deadly feuds will I myself appease,
And th’ amorous bed shall be the charming place
Where all your strife shall in embracing cease.[231]
39. Though it becomes a man and his wife at all times to avoid all
occasions of quarrelling one with another, yet is there no time so
unseasonable for contention as when they are between the same sheets.
As the woman in difficult labor said to those that were about to lay
her upon her bed; How, said she, can this bed cure these pains, since
it was in this very bed that my pleasures were the cause of all my
throes? And still less will those reproaches and contests which the bed
produces be reconciled at any other time or place.
40. Hermione seems to be in the right, speaking to this effect in one
of the tragedies of Euripides:
The lewd discourse of women void of shame
Ruined my honor and my virtuous name.[232]
However, these mischiefs rarely happen but where women at variance and
jealous of their husbands open not only their door but their ears to
whole swarms of twattling gossips, that widen the difference. For then
it behooves a prudent woman to shut her ears and beware of listening to
such enchanting tattlers, calling to mind the answer of Philip, when
he was exasperated by his friends against the Greeks for cursing and
reviling him, notwithstanding all the benefits they had received at
his hands: What would they have done, said he, had we used them with
unkindness and severity? The same should be the reply of a prudent
woman to those she-devils, when they bewail her condition, and cry, A
woman so loving, so chaste and modest, and yet abused by her husband!
For then should she make answer, What would he do, should I begin to
hate him and to do him wrong?
41. A certain master, whose slave had been run away from him for
several months together, after a long search at length found him
suddenly in a workhouse, and said, Where could I have desired to meet
with thee more to my wish than in such a place as this? Thus, when a
woman is grown jealous of her husband and meditates nothing but present
divorce, before she be too hasty, let her reason with herself in this
manner: In what condition would my rival choose to see me with greater
satisfaction than as I am, all in a fret and fume, enraged against my
husband, and ready to abandon both my house and marriage-bed together?
42. The Athenians yearly solemnized three sacred seed-times: the first
in Scirus, in memory of the first invention by their ancestors of
ploughing and sowing; the second at a place called Rharia; and the
third under Pelis, which they call Βουζύγιον in commemoration of the
first spanning of oxen to the plough. But more sacred than all these
is the nuptial ploughing and sowing, in order to the procreation of
children. And therefore Sophocles rightly calls Venus the fruitful
Cytherea. For which reason it highly imports both the man and the
woman, when bound together by the holy tie of wedlock, to abstain from
all unlawful and forbidden copulation, and from ploughing and sowing
where they never desire to reap any fruit of their labor, or, if the
harvest come to perfection, they conceal and are ashamed to own it.
43. The orator Gorgias, in a full assembly of the Grecians, resorting
from all parts to the Olympic games, making an oration to the people,
wherein he exhorted them to live in peace, unity, and concord among
one another, Melanthus cried out aloud: This man pretends to give us
advice, and preaches here in public nothing but love and union, who in
his own private family is not able to keep his wife and his maid from
being continually together by the ears, and yet there are only they
three in the house. For it seems that Gorgias had a kindness for his
servant, which made her mistress jealous. And therefore it behooves
that man to have his family in exquisite order who will undertake
to regulate the failing of his friends or the public miscarriages,
especially since the misbehavior of men toward their wives is far
sooner divulged among the people than the transgressions of women
against their husbands.
44. It is reported that the scent of sweet perfumes will make a cat
grow mad. Now, supposing those strong perfumes which are used by many
men should prove offensive to their wives, would it not be a great
piece of unnatural unkindness to discompose a woman with continual fits
rather than deny himself a pleasure so trivial? But when it is not
their husbands’ perfuming themselves, but their lascivious wandering
after lewd and extravagant women, that disturbs and disorders their
wives, it is a great piece of injustice, for the tickling pleasure of a
few minutes, to afflict and disquiet a virtuous woman. For since they
who are conversant with bees will often abstain from women, to prevent
the persecution of those little but implacable enemies of unclean
dalliance, much rather ought a man to be pure from the pollutions of
harlotry, when he approaches his chaste and lawful wife.
45. They whose business it is to manage elephants never put on white
frocks, nor dare they that govern wild bulls appear in red, those
creatures being scared and exasperated by those colors. And some report
that tigers, when they hear a drum beat afar off, grow mad and exercise
their savage fury upon themselves. If then there are some men that are
offended at the gay and sumptuous habit of their wives, and others that
brook as ill their gadding to plays and balls, what reason is there
that women should not refrain those vanities rather than perplex and
discontent their husbands, with whom it becomes their modesty to live
with patience and sobriety.
46. What said a woman to King Philip, that pulled and hauled her to him
by violence against her will? Let me go, said she, for when the candles
are out, all women are alike. This is aptly applied to men addicted to
adultery and lust. But a virtuous wife, when the candle is taken away,
ought then chiefly to differ from all other women. For when her body is
not to be seen, her chastity, her modesty, and her peculiar affection
to her husband ought then to shine with their brightest lustre.
47. Plato admonishes old men to carry themselves with most gravity in
the presence of young people, to the end the awe of their example may
imprint in youth the greater respect and reverence of age. For the
loose and vain behavior of men stricken in years breeds a contempt of
gray hairs, and never can expect veneration from juvenility. Which
sober admonition should instruct the husband to bear a greater respect
to his wife than to all other women in the world, seeing that the
nuptial chamber must be to her either the school of honor and chastity
or that of incontinency and wantonness. For he that allows himself
those pleasures that he forbids his wife, acts like a man that would
enjoin his wife to oppose those enemies to which he has himself already
surrendered.
48. As to what remains, in reference to superfluity of habit and decent
household furniture, remember, dear Eurydice, what Timoxenas has
written to Aristylla.
And do you, Pollianus, never believe that women will be weaned from
those toys and curiosities wherein they take a kind of pride, and which
serve for an alleviation of their domestic solitude, while you yourself
admire the same things in other women, and are taken with the gayety
of golden beakers, magnificent pictures for your houses, and rich
trappings for your mules and horses. For it were a strange moroseness
to debar a woman those ornamental vanities which naturally her sex
admire, nor will it easily be endured without regret, where she sees
the man much more indulgent to his own humor.
Since then thou art arrived at those years which are proper for the
study of such sciences as are attained by reason and demonstration,
endeavor to complete this knowledge by conversing with persons that
may be serviceable to thee in such a generous design. And as for thy
wife, like the industrious bee, gather everywhere from the fragrant
flowers of good instruction, replenish thyself with whatever may be
of advantage to her, and impart the same to her again in loving and
familiar discourse, both for thy own and her improvement.
For father thou and mother art to her;
She now is thine, and not the parent’s care.[233]
Nor is it less to thy commendation to hear what she returns:
And you, my honored husband, are my guide
And tutor in philosophy beside,
From whose instructions I at once improve
The fruits of knowledge and the sweets of love
For such studies as these fix the contemplations of women upon what is
laudable and serious, and prevent their wasting time upon impertinent
and pernicious vanity. For that lady that is studious in geometry will
never affect the dissolute motions of dancing. And she that is taken
with the sublime notions of Plato and Xenophon will look with disdain
upon the charms and enchantments of witches and sorcerers; and if any
ridiculous astrologer promises to pull the moon down from the sky,
she will laugh at the ignorance and folly of the women who believe in
him, being herself well grounded in astronomy, and having heard about
Aganice, the daughter of Hegetor, a Thessalian lord, who understanding
the reason of the eclipses of the moon, and knowing beforehand the time
of her being obscured by the shadow of the earth, made the credulous
women believe that it was she who at those times unhinged the moon and
removed her from the sky.
True it is, that never any woman brought forth a perfect child
without the assistance and society of man, but there are many whose
imaginations are so strongly wrought upon by the sight or bare relation
of monstrous spectacles, that they bring into the world several
sorts of immature and shapeless productions. Thus, unless great care
be taken by men to manure and cultivate the inclinations of their
wives with wholesome and virtuous precepts, they often breed among
themselves the false conceptions of extravagant and loose desires.
But do thou, Eurydice, make it thy business to be familiar with the
learned proverbs of wise and learned men, and always to embellish
thy discourse with their profitable sentences, to the end thou mayst
be the admiration of other women, that shall behold thee so richly
adorned without the expense or assistance of jewels or embroideries.
For pearls and diamonds are not the purchase of an ordinary purse; but
the ornaments of Theano, Cleobuline, Gorgo the wife of King Leonidas,
Timoclea the sister of Theagenes, the ancient Roman Claudia, or
Cornelia the daughter of Scipio,—already so celebrated and renowned
for their virtues,—will cost but little, yet nothing will set thee out
more glorious or illustrious to the world, or render thy life more
comfortable and happy. For if Sappho, only because she could compose
an elegant verse, had the confidence to write to a haughty and wealthy
dame in her time
Dead thou shalt lie forgotten in thy tomb,
Since not for thee Pierian roses bloom,[234]
why may it not be much more lawful for thee to boast those great
perfections that give thee a greater privilege, not only to gather the
flowers, but to reap the fruits themselves, which the Muses bestow upon
the lovers and real owners of learning and philosophy?