Conjugalia Praecepta
Plutarch
Plutarch. Moralia, Vol. II. Babbitt, Frank Cole, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1928 (printing).
At all times and in all places a wife ought to try to avoid any clash with her husband, and a husband with his wife, but they ought to be especially on their guard against doing this in the privacy of their bedchamber. The woman in travail and pain kept saying to those who were trying to make her go to bed, How can the bed cure this ailment which I contracted in bed? But the disagreements, recriminations, and angry passions which the bed generates are not easily settled in another place and at another time.
Hermione seems to speak the truth when she says,[*](Euripides, Andromache, 930; Cf. also Hieronymus, Adversus Iovinianum, i. chap. xlviii. (vol. ii. p. 292 of Migne’s edition).)
Bad women’s visits brought about my fall.This, however, does not come about so simply, but only when marital disagreements and jealousies open not only a wife’s doors but also her hearing to such women. So, at such a time especially, a woman who has sense ought to stop her ears, and be on her guard against whispered insinuations, so that fire may not be added to fire,[*](Cf. the note on 123 F supra. ) and she ought to have ready in mind the saying of Philip.[*](Cf.Moralia, 179 A and 457 F. A similar remark of Pausanias is quoted in Moralia , 230 D.) For it is told that when he was being incited by his friends against the Greeks on the ground that they were being well treated, but were speaking ill of him, he said, What would happen, then, if we were to treat them ill? So when these back-biters say, Your husband treats grievously his loving and virtuous wife. Yes, what would happen, then, if I were to begin to hate him and wrong him?
A man whose slave had run away, on catching sight of the fugitive some time later, ran after him; but when the slave got ahead of him by taking refuge in a treadmill, the master said, Where else could I have wished to find you rather than here? [*](A remark of the same tenor is attributed to Phocion by Plutarch, Moralia , 188 A, and Life of Phocion, chap. x. (p. 746 E).) So then let the woman who, on account of jealousy, is entering a writ of divorce, and is in a high dudgeon, say to herself, Where else would my rival like better to see me, what would she rather have me do, than feel aggrieved with my husband and quarrel with him and abandon my very home and chamber?
The Athenians observe three sacred ploughings: the first at Scirum [*](Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und. rom. Mythologie, s.v. Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 166-8.) in commemoration of the most ancient of sowings; the second in Raria,[*](Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und. rom. Mythologie, s.v. Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 166-8.) and the third near the base of the Acropolis, the so-called Buzygius [*](Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Lexikon der griech. und. rom. Mythologie, s.v. Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 166-8.) (the ox-yoking). But most sacred of all such sowings is the marital sowing and ploughing for the procreation of children. It is a beautiful epithet
which Sophocles applied to Aphrodite when he called her bountiful-bearing Cytherea. [*](Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag., p. 310, Sophocles, No. 763.) Therefore man and wife ought especially to indulge in this with circumspection, keeping themselves pure from all unholy and unlawful intercourse with others, and not sowing seed from which they are unwilling to have any offspring,[*](Cf. Plato, Laws, p. 839 A.) and from which if any issue does result, they are ashamed of it, and try to conceal it.When the orator Gorgias read to the Greeks at Olympia a speech about concord,[*](Cf. Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, ii. pp. 248-9 (Gorgias, B 7-8).) Melanthius said, This fellow is giving us advice about concord, and yet in his own household he has not prevailed upon himself, his wife, and maidservant, three persons only, to live in concord. For there was, apparently, some love on Gorgias’s part and jealousy on the wife’s part towards the girl. A man therefore ought to have his household well harmonized who is going to harmonize State, Forum, and friends. For it is much more likely that the sins of women rather than sins against women will go unnoticed by most people.
They say that the cat is excited to frenzy by the odour of perfumes. Now if it happened that women were similarly made furious and frantic by perfumes, it would be a dreadful thing for their husbands not to abstain from perfume, but for the sake of their own brief pleasure to permit their wives to suffer in this way. Now inasmuch as women are affected in this way, not by their husbands’ using perfume, but by their having connexion with other women, it is unfair to pain and disturb them so much for the sake of a trivial pleasure, and not to follow with wives the practice observed in approaching bees
(because these insects are thought to be irritable and bellicose towards men who have been with women) [*](A wide-spread ancient superstition; the classical references may be found in Magerstedt, Die Bienenzucht des Altertums, Sondershausen, 1851.) —to be pure and clean from all connexion with others when they approach their wives.Those who have to go near elephants do not put on bright clothes, nor do those who go near bulls put on red[*](Cf.Moralia, 330 B.); for the animals are made especially furious by these colours; and tigers, they say, when surrounded by the noise of beaten drums go completely mad and tear themselves to pieces.[*](Cf.Moralia, 167 C.) Since, then, this is also the case with men, that some cannot well endure the sight of scarlet and purple clothes, while others are annoyed by cymbals and drums, [*](An indication that the wife was interested in some foreign religion like the worship of Cybele.) what terrible hardship is it for women to refrain from such things, and not disquiet or irritate their husbands, but live with them in constant gentleness?
A woman once said to Philip, who was trying to force her to come to him against her will, Let me go. All women are the same when the lights are out. This is well said as an answer to adulterous and licentious men, but the wedded wife ought especially when the light is out not to be the same as ordinary women, but, when her body is invisible, her virtue, her exclusive devotion to her husband, her constancy, and her affection, ought to be most in evidence.
Plato [*](Laws, p. 729 C. Also cited or referred to by Plutarch, Moralia , 14 B, 71 B, and 272 C.) used to advise the elderly men more especially to have the sense of shame before the young, so that the young may be respectful toward them; for where the old men are without sense of shame, he felt, no respect or deference is engendered
in the young. The husband ought to bear this in mind, and show no greater respect for anybody than for his wife, seeing that their chamber is bound to be for her a school of orderly behaviour or of wantonness. The man who enjoys the very pleasures from which he tries to dissuade his wife is in no wise different from him who bids her fight to the death against the enemies to whom he has himself surrendered.In regard to love of finery, I beg, Eurydice, that you will read and try to remember what was written to Aristylla by Timoxena [*](Plutarch’s wife presumably; who Aristylla was we do not know.); and as for you, Pollianus, you must not think that your wife will refrain from immoderate display and extravagance if she sees that you do not despise these things in others, but, on the contrary, find delight in gilded drinking-cups, pictured walls, trappings for mules, and showy neckbands for horses. For it is impossible to expel extravagance from the wife’s part of the house when it has free range amid the men’s rooms.
Besides, Pollianus, you already possess sufficient maturity to study philosophy, and I beg that you will beautify your character with the aid of discourses which are attended by logical demonstration and mature deliberation, seeking the company and instruction of teachers who will help you. And for your wife you must collect from every source what is useful, as do the bees, and carrying it within your own self impart it to her, and then discuss it with her, and make the best of these doctrines her favourite and familiar themes. For to her
Thou art a father and precious-loved mother, Yea, and a brother as well.[*](Adapted from Homer, Il. vi. 429.)No less ennobling is it for a man to hear his wife say, My dear husband,
Nay, but thou art to me [*](Adapted from Homer, Il. vi. 429.)guide, philosopher, and teacher in all that is most lovely and divine. Studies of this sort, in the first place, divert women from all untoward conduct; for a woman studying geometry will be ashamed to be a dancer, and she will not swallow any beliefs in magic charms while she is under the charm of Plato’s or Xenophon’s words. And if anybody professes power to pull down the moon from the sky, she will laugh at the ignorance and stupidity of women who believe these things, inasmuch as she herself is not unschooled in astronomy, and has read in the books about Aglaonice, [*](Cf.Moralia, 416 F. The belief that Thessalian women had the power to draw down the moon was wide-spread in antiquity. It may suffice here to refer to Aristophanes, Clouds, 749, and for Aglaonice to Plutarch, Moralia 417 A.) the daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly, and how she, through being thoroughly acquainted with the periods of the full moon when it is subject to eclipse, and, knowing beforehand the time when the moon was due to be overtaken by the earth’s shadow, imposed upon the women, and made them all believe that she was drawing down the moon.
It is said that no woman ever produced a child without the co-operation of a man, yet there are misshapen, fleshlike, uterine growths originating in some infection, which develop of themselves and acquire firmness and solidity, and are commonly called moles. [*](Cf. Aristotle, De generatione animalium, iv. 7.) Great care must be taken that this sort of thing does not take place in women’s minds. For if they do not receive the seed of good doctrines and share with their husbands in intellectual advance
ment, they, left to themselves, conceive many untoward ideas and low designs and emotions.And as for you, Eurydice, I beg that you will try to be conversant with the sayings of the wise and good, and always have at your tongue’s end those sentiments which you used to cull in your girlhood’s days when you were with us, so that you may give joy to your husband, and may be admired by other women, adorned, as you will be, without price, with rare and precious jewels. For you cannot acquire and put upon you this rich woman’s pearls or that foreign woman’s silks without buying them at a high price, but the ornaments of Theano,[*](Wife of Pythagoras, Cf. 142 C, supra. ) Cleobulina,[*](Also called Eumetis, daughter of Cleobulus; Cf. 148 C-E, 150 E, and 154 A-C, infra.) Gorgo,[*](Daughter of Cleomenes, king of Sparta; Cf. Herodotus, vii. 239.) the wife of Leonidas, Timocleia, [*](Plutarch tells of Timocleia’s intrepid behaviour after the battle of Chaeroneia in Moralia , 259 C, and Life of Alexander, chap. xii. (p. 671 A).) the sister of Theagenes, Claudia [*](Claudia vindicated her virtue when the goddess Cybele was brought to Rome; Livy xxix. 14.) of old, Cornelia, [*](Better known as the mother of the Gracchi, who said of her sons, These aremy jewels. ) daughter of Scipio, and of all other women who have been admired and renowned, you may wear about you without price, and, adorning yourself with these, you may live a life of distinction and happiness.
If Sappho thought that her beautiful compositions in verse justified her in writing [*](Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Gr. iii. p. 111, Sappho, No. 68; J.M. Edmonds, Lyra Graeca ), in the L.C.L. i. p. 69. to a certain rich woman,
Dead in the tomb shalt thou lie, Nor shall there be thought of thee there, For in the roses of Pierian fields Thou hast no share,why shall it not be even more allowable for you to entertain high and splendid thoughts of yourself, if you have a share not only in the roses but also in the fruits which the Muses bring and graciously bestow upon those who admire education and philosophy?