Economics

Now after seeing the ship’s tackle in such perfect order, I told my wife: Considering that folk aboard a merchant vessel, even though it be a little one, find room for things and keep order, though tossed violently to and fro, and find what they want to get, though terror-stricken, it would be downright carelessness on our part if we, who have large storerooms in our house to keep everything separate and whose house rests on solid ground, fail to find a good and handy place for everything. Would it not be sheer stupidity on our part?

How good it is to keep one’s stock of utensils in order, and how easy to find a suitable place in a house to put each set in, I have already said.

And what a beautiful sight is afforded by boots of all sorts and conditions ranged in rows! How beautiful it is to see cloaks of all sorts and conditions kept separate, or blankets, or brazen vessels, or table furniture! Yes, no serious man will smile when I claim that there is beauty in the order even of pots and pans set out in neat array, however much it may move the laughter of a wit.

There is nothing, in short, that does not gain in beauty when set out in order. For each set looks like a troop of utensils, and the space between the sets is beautiful to see, when each set is kept clear of it, just as a troop of dancers about the altar is a beautiful spectacle in itself, and even the free space looks beautiful and unencumbered.

We can test the truth of what I say, dear, without any inconvenience and with very little trouble. Moreover, my dear, there is no ground for any misgiving that it is hard to find someone who will get to know the various places and remember to put each set in its proper place.

For we know, I take it, that the city as a whole has ten thousand times as much of everything as we have; and yet you may order any sort of servant to buy something in the market and to bring it home, and he will be at no loss: every one of them is bound to know where he should go to get each article. Now the only reason for this is that everything is kept in a fixed place.

But when you are searching for a person, you often fail to find him, though he may be searching for you himself. And for this again the one reason is that no place of meeting has been fixed.Such is the gist of the conversation I think I remember having with her about the arrangement of utensils and their use.

And what was the result? I asked; did you think, Ischomachus, that your wife paid any heed to the lessons you tried so earnestly to teach her? Why, she promised to attend to them, and was evidently pleased beyond measure to feel that she had found a solution of her difficulties, and she begged me to lose no time in arranging things as I had suggested.

And how did you arrange things for her, Ischomachus? I asked. Why, I decided first to show her the possibilities of our house. For it contains few elaborate decorations, Socrates; but the rooms are designed simply with the object of providing as convenient receptacles as possible for the things that are to fill them, and thus each room invited just what was suited to it.

Thus the store-room by the security of its position called for the most valuable blankets and utensils, the dry covered rooms for the corn, the cool for the wine, the well-lit for those works of art and vessels that need light.

I showed her decorated living-rooms for the family that are cool in summer and warm in winter.[*](Mem. III. viii. 9.) I showed her that the whole house fronts south, so that it was obvious that it is sunny in winter and shady in summer.

I showed her the women’s quarters too, separated by a bolted door from the men’s, so that nothing which ought not to be moved may be taken out, and that the servants may not breed without our leave. For honest servants generally prove more loyal if they have a family; but rogues, if they live in wedlock, become all the more prone to mischief.

And now that we had completed the list, we forthwith set about separating the furniture tribe by tribe. We began by collecting together the vessels we use in sacrificing. After that we put together the women’s holiday finery, and the men’s holiday and war garb, blankets in the women’s, blankets in the men’s quarters, women’s shoes, men’s shoes.