Conjugalia Praecepta

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.

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

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.

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.