Cleita raised her head. “All day you have been going up and down and to and fro! You have been entertained.”
“Entertainment is not all in life, my Cleita.”
“That, my master,” said Gorgo, “is just what we have been telling her!”
“I never said that it was;” said Cleita. She wrapped her head in the Egyptian scarf and again dropped it upon her arms.
Glaucon seriously considered her. “Have you not the children, Cleita? Have you not the management of the house?”
“That,” said Gorgo, “is unanswerable!”
Glaucon sat upon the edge of the couch. “The gods, Cleita, have parted one way of life to women and another to men. Will you deny the gods wisdom? All of us, at times, know discontent. The soldier thinks his life hard, the statesman often would lay down his cares, the mechanic grumbles, the servant repines. But the gods have willed degrees and duties. If women—if Athenian wives and mothers—went abroad from the house, if they were seen by all men everywhere, if we met them in the streets, the market-place, the theatre, the school, the palæstra, where not, there would arise in the state great confusion! In a short while we should be no better than barbarians! But the gods have set comely bounds for women, as they have given to men freedom under the sky. Strive not against the decrees of the gods! Cease this hungering and fretting for what is not good for you. There is impiety, O my Cleita, in your discontent!”
Gorgo drew a breath of rapture. “We do not need to go to Delphi!”
“Uncover your head, Cleita,” said Glaucon. “Sit up and cease this weeping!”
Cleita lay still. Then she raised herself upon her elbow, and drew the linen a little aside. “Myrina—”