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.

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.
    • [*](Eurip. Andromache, 930.)
    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?

    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?

    The Athenians yearly solemnized three sacred seedtimes: 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.

    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.