36. Mothers appear to be more fond of their sons, because those sons are able to help them, and fathers of their daughters, because daughters need their help. Maybe also it is out of compliment to each other that both parties desire to be seen making much of that which is more akin to the other. This, perhaps, is a trait of no importance, but there is another which is charming. I mean, when the wife’s respect is seen to incline rather to the husband’s parents than to her own, and when, |C| in case of anything troubling her, she refers it to them and conceals it from her own people. If you are thought to trust, you are trusted; if you are thought to love, you are loved.
37. The Greeks who accompanied Cyrus received the following order from their commanders: ‘If the enemy come shouting to the attack, await them in silence; if they come in silence, charge to meet them with a shout.’ When a husband has his fits of anger, if he raises his voice, a sensible wife keeps quiet; if he is silent, she soothes him by talking to him in a coaxing way.
38. Euripides is right in blaming those who have the lyre |D| played to them at their wine. Music is more properly called in to cure anger and grief than to encourage further abandonment on the part of those who are taking their pleasure. So I would have you believe that it is a wrong principle to share the same bed for the sake of pleasure, and yet, when you are angry or fall out, to sleep apart. That is exactly the time to call in the Goddess of Love, who is the best physician for such cases. This is practically the teaching of the poet, when he makes Hera say:
And their tangled strife will I loosen,
When to their couch I bring them, to meet in love and in union.
|E| 39. At all times and everywhere a wife should avoid offending the husband, and a husband the wife; but especially should they beware of doing so when together at night. In the story, the wife, in the vexation of her throes, used to say to those who were putting her to bed: ‘How can this couch cure a trouble which befell me upon it?’ So quarrels, recriminations, and tempers which are begotten in the chamber are not easily got over in another place or at another time.
40. There appears to be a truth in Hermione’s plea: |F|
‘Tis wicked women’s visits have undone me.
This occurs in more than one way, but especially when connubial quarrels and jealousies offer to such women not only an open door, but an open ear. At such a time, therefore, should a sensible woman shut her ears, keep out of the way of slanderous whispers which add fuel to the fire, and be ready to apply the well-known saying of Philip. We are told that when his friends were trying to exasperate that monarch against the Greeks—on the ground that, though he treated them well, they abused him—he remarked, ‘Well, and what, pray, if we treat them badly?’ So, when the scandalizers say, ‘Your husband grieves you, in spite of all your affection and chastity,’ you |144| should retort, ‘And what, pray, if I begin to hate and wrong him?’
41. A man caught sight of a slave who had run away some time before, and gave chase. When the slave was too quick, and took refuge in a mill, he observed, ‘And in what better place could I have wished to find you than where you are?‘[[40]] So let a woman who is declaring for a divorce through jealousy say to herself, ‘And where would my rival be more glad to see me? And what would she be more pleased to see me doing, than harbouring a grievance, at feud with my husband, and actually abandoning the house and the marriage-chamber?’