and of a verity Pisias makes us to side with Daphnæus by his extravagant language, charging marriage with being a loveless intercourse, and one that has no participation in divine friendship, although we can see that it is an intercourse, if erotic persuasion and favour fail, that cannot be restrained by shame and fear as by bit and bridle." Thereupon Pisias said, "I care little about his arguments; but I see that Daphnæus is in the same condition as brass: for, just as it is not worked upon so much by the agency of fire as by the molten and liquid brass fused with it, so is he not so much captivated by the beauty of Lysandra as by his association with one who is the victim of the gentle passion; and it is plain that, if he doesn't take refuge with us, he will soon melt away in the flame altogether. But I see, what Anthemion would very much like, that I am offending the Court, so I stop." "You amuse us," said Anthemion: "but you ought from the first to have spoken to the point."
§ vii. "I say then," continued Pisias, "and give it out boldly, as far as I am concerned, let every woman have a lover; but we ought to guard against giving the wealth of Ismenodora to Baccho, lest, if we involve him in so much grandeur and magnificence, we unwittingly lose him in it, as tin is lost in brass. For if the lad were to marry quite a plain and insignificant woman, it would be great odds whether he would keep the upper hand, as wine mixed with water; and Ismenodora seems already marked out for sway and command; for otherwise she would not have rejected such illustrious and wealthy suitors to woo a lad hardly yet arrived at man's estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better to be bound by golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, than to a woman's wealth."
§ viii. Here Protogenes put in, "You say nothing about the risk we run of unseasonably and ridiculously reversing the well-known advice of Hesiod:
'If seasonable marriage you would make, Let about thirty be the bridegroom's age, The bride be in the fifth year of her womanhood:'[72]
if we thus marry a lad hardly old enough for marriage to a woman so many years older, than himself, as dates and figs are forced. You will say she loves him passionately: who prevents her, then, from serenading at his doors, singing her amorous ditty, putting garlands on his statues, and wrestling and boxing with her rivals in his affections? For all these are what people in love do. And let her lower her eyebrows, and give up the airs of a coquette, and assume the appearance of those that are deeply smitten. But if she is modest and chaste, let her decorously stay at home and await there her lovers and sweethearts; for any sensible man would be disgusted and flee from a woman who took the initiative in love, far less would he be likely to marry her after such a barefaced wooing."
§ ix. When Protogenes had done speaking, my father said, "Do you see, Anthemion, that they force us to intervene again, who have no objection to dance in the retinue of conjugal Love?" "I do," said Anthernion, "but pray defend Love at some length, as you are on his side, and moreover come to the rescue of wealth,[73] with which Pisias seeks to scare us." Thereupon my father began, "What on earth will not be brought as a charge against a woman, if we are to reject Ismenodora because she is in love and has money? Granted she loves sway and is rich? What then, if she is young and handsome? And what if she plumes herself somewhat on the lustre of her race? Have not chaste women often something of the morose and peevish in their character almost past bearing? Do they not sometimes get called waspish and shrewish by virtue of their very chastity? Would it be best then to marry off the street some Thracian Abrotonus, or some Milesian Bacchis, and seal the bargain by the present of a handful of nuts? But we have known even such turn out intolerable tyrants, Syrian flute-girls and ballet-dancers, as Aristonica, and Œnanthe with her tambourine, and Agathoclea, who have lorded it over kings' diadems.[74] Why Syrian Semiramis was only the servant and concubine of one of king Ninus's slaves, till Ninus the great king seeing and falling in love with her, she got such power over him that she thought so cheap of him, that she asked to be allowed one day to sit on the royal throne, with the royal diadem on her head, and to transact state affairs. And Ninus having granted her permission, and having ordered all his subjects to obey her as himself, she first gave several very moderate orders to make trial of the guards; but when she saw that they obeyed her without the slightest hesitation, she ordered them to seize Ninus and put him in fetters, and at last put him to death; and all her commands being obeyed, she ruled over Asia for a long time with great lustre. And was not Belestiche a foreign woman off the streets, although at Alexandria she has shrines and temples, with an inscription as Aphrodite Belestiche, which she owes to the king's love? And she who has in this very town[75] a temple and rites in common with Eros, and at Delphi stands in gold among kings and queens, by what dowry got she her lovers? But just as the lovers of Semiramis, Belestiche, and Phryne, became their prey unconsciously through their weakness and effeminacy, so on the other hand poor and obscure men, having contracted alliances with rich women of rank, have not been thereby spoilt nor merged their personality, but have lived with their wives on a footing of kindness, yet still kept their position as heads of the house. But he that abases his wife and makes her small, like one who tightens the ring on a finger too small for it fearing it will come off,[76] is like those who cut their mares' tails off and then take them to a river or pond to drink, when they say that sorrowfully discerning their loss of beauty these mares lose their self-respect and allow themselves to be covered by asses.[77] To select a wife for wealth rather than for her excellence or family is dishonourable and illiberal; but it is silly to reject wealth when it is accompanied by excellence and family. Antigonus indeed wrote to his officer who had garrisoned Munychia[78] to make not only the collar strong but the dog lean, that he might undermine the strength of the Athenians; but it becomes not the husband of a rich or handsome woman to make his wife poor or ugly, but by his self-control and good sense, and by not too extravagantly showing his admiration for her, to exhibit himself as her equal not her slave, and (to borrow an illustration from the scales) to add just so much weight to his character as shall over-balance her, yet only just. Moreover, both Ismenodora and Baccho are of a suitable age for marriage and procreation of children; Ismenodora, I hear, is still in her prime, and" (here my father smiled slily at Pisias) "she is certainly not a bit older than her rivals, and has no grey hairs, as some of those who consort with Baccho have. And if their union is seasonable, who knows but that she may be a better partner for him than any young woman? For young couples do not blend and mix well together, and it takes a long time and is not an easy process for them to divest themselves of their pride and spirit, and at first there's a good deal of dirty weather and they don't pull well together, and this is oftenest the case when there's love on both sides, and, just as a storm wrecks the ship if no pilot is on board, so their marriage is trouble and confusion, neither party knowing how either to rule or to give way properly. And if the baby is under the nurse, and the boy under the master, and the lad under the master of the gymnasium, and the youth under his lover, and the full-grown man under the law and magistrate, and no one is his own master and exempt from obedience to someone, what wonder would it be if a sensible woman rather older than her husband would direct well the life of a young man, being useful to him by reason of her superior wisdom, and acceptable to him for her sweetness and gentleness? And to sum up the whole matter," said he, "we Bœotians ought to revere Hercules, and so find no fault in any inequality of age in marriages, seeing that he gave his own wife Megara in marriage to Iolaus, though he was only sixteen and she three-and-thirty."[79]
§ x. As the conversation was going on, our father said that a friend of Pisias came galloping up from the town to report an act of marvellous audacity. Ismenodora, it appears, thinking Baccho had no personal dislike to the match, but only stood in awe of his friends who tried to dissuade him from it, determined that she would not let the young fellow slip through her fingers. Accordingly, she sent for the most active and intimate[80] of her male friends, and for some of her female cronies, and instructed them as to what part they should play, and waited for the hour when Baccho was accustomed regularly to pass by her house on his way to the wrestling-school. And as he passed by on this occasion with two or three of his companions, anointed for the exercise, Ismenodora met him at the door and just touched his cloak, and her friends rushed out all together and prettily seized the pretty fellow as he was in his cloak and jersey,[81] and hurried him into the house and at once locked the doors. And the women inside at once divested him of his cloak and put on him a bridal robe; and the servants ran about the town and put olive wreaths and laurel garlands at the doors of Baccho's house as well as Ismenodora's, and a flute-girl went up and down the street playing and singing the wedding-song. And some of the inhabitants of Thespiæ and the strangers laughed, others were indignant and tried to make the superintendents of the gymnasium move in the matter, for they have great power in Thespiæ over the youths, and pay great attention to their actions. And now there was no more talk about the sports, but everyone left the theatre for the neighbourhood of Ismenodora's house, and there stood in groups talking and disputing about what had happened.
§ xi. Now when Pisias' friend had come up like an aide-de-camp in war, "bloody with spurring, fiery red with haste," to report this news that Ismenodora had seized Baccho, my father said that Zeuxippus smiled, and being a great lover of Euripides repeated the line,
"Lady, though rich, thou hast thy sex's feelings."
But Pisias jumped up and cried out, "Ye gods, what will be the end of license like this which will overthrow our town? Already we are fast tending to lawlessness through our independence. And yet it is perhaps ridiculous to be indignant about law and justice, when nature itself is trampled upon by being thus subjected to women? Saw even Lemnos ever the like of this?[82] Let us go," he continued, "let us go and hand over to the women the gymnasium and council-hall, if the townsmen have lost all their nerve." Pisias then left the company, and Protogenes went with him, partly sympathizing with his indignation, but still endeavouring to cool him. And Anthemion said, "'Twas a bold deed and certainly does savour somewhat of Lemnos—I own it now we are alone—this Ismenodora must be most violently in love." Hereupon Soclarus said, with a sly smile, "You don't think then that this rape and detention was an excuse and stratagem on the part of a wily young man to escape from the clutches of his lovers, and fly of his own volition to the arms of a rich and handsome widow?" "Pray don't say so, Soclarus," said Anthemion, "pray don't entertain any such suspicions of Baccho, for even if he were not by nature most simple and naïve, he would not have concealed the matter from me to whom he divulges all his secrets, especially as he knows that I have always been very anxious he should marry Ismenodora. But as Heraclitus says truly, It is more difficult to control love than anger; for whatever love has a fancy to, it will buy even at the cost of life, money, and reputation. Who lives a more quiet life in our town than Ismenodora? When did ever any ugly rumour attach itself to her? When did ever any breath of suspicion sully her house? Some divine inspiration, beyond human calculation, seems now to have possessed her."