Conjugalia Praecepta

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. II. Goodwin, William W., editor; Philips, John, translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

    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.

    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.

    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.

    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.