“Nay, but they know how to make them all.”
“Do you not know then, how Nausicydes not only supports himself and his household by making barley meal, and has become so rich that he is often called upon to make special contributions to the State[35] and how Corœlus, the baker, lives in fine style on the profits of bread-making, and Demias on mantle-making, and Menon on cloak-making, and nearly every one in Megara on the making of vests?”
“That is very true, Socrates. But all these buy barbarians for slaves, and make them work; but my people are free by birth and kinsfolk of my own.”
“And because they are free and kinsfolk of yours must they do nothing but eat and sleep? Do you suppose that other free people are happier when they live in this indolent fashion, or when they employ themselves in useful occupations? What about your kinsfolk, my friend? At present I take it, you do not love them, and they do not love you, for you think them a great trouble and loss to you, and they see that you feel them to be a burden. It is only too likely that all natural affection will turn under these circumstances to positive dislike. But if you will put them in the way of making their own livelihood, every thing will go right; you will have a kindly feeling for them because they will be helping you, and they will have as much regard for you, because they will see that you are pleased with them. They know, you say, how to do the things that are a woman’s becoming work; don’t hesitate therefore to set them in the way of doing it. I am sure that they will be glad enough to follow.”
“By all the gods, Socrates, you are right. I dare say I could borrow a little money to set the thing going; but to tell you the truth, I did not like to run into debt, when all the money would simply be eaten. It is a different thing, now that there will be a chance of paying it back, and I have no doubt that there will be some way of managing it.”
Just at this point a little boy came up with a message for Socrates. “My mistress bids me say,” he cried in a somewhat undertone, “that the dinner is waiting, and that you must come at once.” “There are commands which all must obey,” said the philosopher with a smile, “and this is one of them. And indeed it would be ungrateful to the excellent Xanthippe, if after hearing she has taken so much pains to prepare one’s dinner, one was to refuse the very easy return of eating it. Farewell, my friends.”
And the philosopher went his way.
To Callias the conversation which he had just heard was peculiarly interesting, because the theory in his family was that which was probably accepted in almost every upper class house in Athens, that it was a disgrace for a free-born woman to work for her living, and that all handicrafts, even in those who constantly exercised them, were degrading and lowering to the character. Xenophon already knew what his master thought upon these points, but to his younger friend this “gospel of work,” as it may be called, was a positive revelation. He did not value it even when, a few days later, he heard from Aristarchus that the experiment had succeeded to admiration. “I only had to buy a few pounds of wool,” he said; “the women are as happy as queens, and I have not got to think all day and night, but never find out, how to make both ends meet.”