A wife ought not to make friends of her own, but to enjoy her husband’s friends in common with him. The gods are the first and most important friends. Wherefore it is becoming for a wife to worship and to know only the gods that her husband believes in, and to shut the front door tight upon all queer rituals and outlandish superstitions. For with no god do stealthy and secret rites performed by a woman find any favour.

Plato , p. 462 C. Cf. also Plutarch, , 484 B and 767 D. asserts that the state is prosperous and happy in which the people hear mine and not mine most rarely uttered, the reason being that the citizens, so far as in them lies, treat all things of real importance as common property. Much more should such expressions be eliminated from the married state; save that, as physicians tell us that blows on the left side of the body record the sensation on the right side, so, in the same way, it is a lovely thing for the wife to sympathize with her husband’s concerns and the husband with the wife’s, so that, as ropes, by being intertwined, get strength from each other, thus, by the due contribution of goodwill in corresponding measure by each member, the copartnership may be preserved through the joint action of both. For Nature unites us through the commingling of our bodies, in order that, by taking and blending together a portion derived from each member of a pair, the offspring which she produces may be common to both, so that neither can define or distinguish his own or the other’s part therein. Such a copartnership in property as well is especially befitting married people, who should pour all their resources into a common fund, and combine them, and each should not regard one part as his own and another part as the other’s, but all as his own and nothing as the other’s. As we call a mixture wine, although the larger of the component parts is water, so the property and the estate ought to be said to belong to the husband even though the wife contribute the larger share.

Helen was fond of wealth and Paris of pleasure; Odysseus was sensible and Penelope virtuous. Therefore the marriage of the latter pair was happy and enviable, while that of the former created an Iliad of woes for Greeks and barbarians.

The Roman,Cf. Plutarch’s , chap. v. (p. 257 B), and Hieronymus, , i. chap. xlviii. (vol. ii. p. 292 of Migne’s edition). on being admonished by his friends because he had put away a virtuous, wealthy, and lovely wife, reached out his shoe and said, Yes, this is beautiful to look at, and new, but nobody knows where it pinches me. A wife, then, ought not to rely on her dowry or birth or beauty, but on things in which she gains the greatest hold on her husband, namely conversation, character, and comradeship, which she must render not perverse or vexatious day by day, but accommodating, inoffensive, and agreeable. For, as physicians have more fear of fevers that originate from obscure causes and gradual accretion than of those which may be accounted for by manifest and weighty reasons, so it is the petty, continual, daily clashes between man and wife, unnoticed by the great majority, that disrupt and mar married life.

King Philip was enamoured of a Thessalian woman who was accused of using magic charms upon him. Olympias accordingly made haste to get the woman into her power. But when the latter had come into the queen’s presence and was seen to be beautiful in appearance, and her conversation with the queen was not lacking in good-breeding or cleverness, Olympias exclaimed, Away with these slanders! You have your magic charms in yourself. Much the same story is told of the wife of Hystaspes by Satyrus in his Life of Euripides (, ix. p. 157). And so a wedded and lawful wife becomes an irresistible thing if she makes everything, dowry, birth, magic charms, and even the magic girdle Homer, xiv. 214. itself, to be inherent in herself, and by character and virtue succeeds in winning her husband’s love.

On another occasion, when a young man of the court had married a beautiful woman Pantica of Cyprus, according to Phylarchus, as quoted by Athenaeus, 609 C. of bad reputa- tion, Olympias said, That fellow has no brains; else he would not have married on sight. Marriages ought not to be made by trusting the eyes only, or the fingers either, as is the case with some who take a wife after counting up how much she brings with her, but without deciding what kind of a helpmate she will be.

Socrates Attributed to Bias by Stobaeus, , iii. 79 ζ, and by Demetrius Phalereus, Other authors (e.g. Diogenes Laertius, ii. 33) assign it to Socrates. used to urge the ill-favoured among the mirror-gazing youth to make good their defect by virtue, and the handsome not to disgrace their face and figure by vice. So too it is an admirable thing for the mistress of the household, whenever she holds her mirror in her hands, to talk with herself—for the ill-favoured woman to say to herself, What if I am not virtuous? and the beautiful one, What if I am virtuous as well? For if the ill-favoured woman is loved for her character, that is something of which she can be very proud, far more than if she were loved for her beauty.

The Sicilian despot Dionysius according to Plutarch, , 190 E, 229 A, and , chap. ii. (p. 439 D). The same story is told of Archidamus in , 218 E. sent clothing and jewellery of the costly kind to the daughters of Lysander; but Lysander would not accept them, saying, These adornments will disgrace my daughters far more than they will adorn them. But Sophocles,From an unknown play; cf. Nauck, p. 310, Sophocles, No. 762. before Lysander, had said this: Adornment! No, you wretch! Naught that adorns ’Twould seem to be—your crazy mind’s desire. For, as Crates used to say, adornment is that which adorns, and that adorns or decorates a woman which makes her more decorous. It is not gold or precious stones or scarlet that makes her such, but whatever invests her with that something which betokens dignity, good behaviour, and modesty.

Those who offer sacrifice to Hera, the Protectress of Wedlock,Cf. O. Gruppe, , p. 1134; also Plutarch, Frag. 2 of (in Bernardakis’s edition, vol. vii. p. 44). do not consecrate the bitter gall with the other parts of the offering, but remove it and cast it beside the altar—an intimation on the part of him who established this custom that bitterness and anger ought never to find a place in married life. For the acerbity of the mistress, like that of wine, ought to be salutary and pleasant, not bitter like that of aloes, nor suggestive of a dose of medicine.

Plato The same advice in 769 D, in Plutarch’s , chap. ii. (p. 407 A), and a slightly different inference in , 753 C. advised Xenocrates, who was somewhat churlish in character but otherwise a good and honourable man, to sacrifice to the Graces. It is my opinion that the virtuous woman has especial need of graces in her relations with her husband, in order that, as Metrodorus Cf., 753 C. used to put it, she may live pleasantly with him and not be cross all the time because she is virtuous. The thrifty woman must not neglect cleanliness, nor the loving wife cheerfulness; for asperity makes a wife’s correct behaviour disagreeable, just as untidiness has a similar effect upon plain living.