|B| 42. The Athenians observe three sacred ploughings; the first at Sciron, in memory of the oldest sowing of crops; the second in the Rharian district; and the third—known as the Buzygian festival—close to the Acropolis. More sacred than all of these is the connubial ploughing and sowing for the procreation of children. It is a happy expression of Sophocles, when he calls Aphrodite ‘fair-fruited Cytherea‘. Man and wife should therefore be especially scrupulous in this connexion, keeping pure from unholy and unlawful intercourse with others, and forbearing to sow where they desire no crop to grow, or, if it does, are ashamed of it and seek to conceal it.
43. When Gorgias the rhetorician once read to the Greeks at Olympia a discourse upon peace and harmony, Melanthius exclaimed, ‘Here is a man giving us advice about peace and |C| harmony, when in private life he has failed to harmonize three people—himself, his wife, and his maidservant.’ For Gorgias, it appears, was enamoured, and his wife jealous, of the domestic. A man’s house ought to be in tune before he offers to set in tune a state, a public meeting, or friends. The public is more likely to hear of offences against a wife than of offences committed by her.
44. They say that the cat is driven frantic by the smell of unguents. If it had been the case that women were provoked |D| out of their senses by the same means, it would have been a monstrous thing for men not to abstain from unguents, and to let their wives suffer so cruelly for the sake of a trifling gratification of their own. Now since, though the husband’s use of unguents does not so afflict them, his dealings with other women do, it is unjust to cause such vexation and distress to a wife for the sake of a little pleasure. On the contrary, husbands should come to their wives pure and untainted by other intercourse, just as they would approach bees, who are said to show disgust and hostility towards any one who has been so engaged.
45. People never dress in bright clothes when approaching |E| an elephant, nor in red when approaching a bull, since the animals in question are particularly infuriated by those colours. Of tigers it is said that, if you beat drums all round them, they go mad and tear themselves to pieces. Surely, then, inasmuch as some men cannot bear to see scarlet or purple clothes, and some are irritated at cymbals and tambourines, it is not asking too much for women to leave such things alone, and not harass or exasperate their husbands, but practise quietude and consideration in their society.
|F| 46. When Philip was once seizing upon a woman against her will, she said, ‘Let me go. All women are the same when you take away the light.’ While this applies well enough to adulterers and sensualists, it is particularly when the light is taken away that a wife should not be the same as any ordinary female. Her person may not be visible, but her modesty, chastity, decorum, and natural affection should make themselves palpable.
47. Plato used to recommend that respect should rather be paid by elderly men to the young, so that the latter might behave modestly to them in return. For, said he, ‘where old men are shameless,’ the young acquire no modesty or scruple. A husband should bear this in mind, and show more respect |145| to his wife than to any one else, since the nuptial chamber will prove to be her school of propriety or its opposite. The husband who indulges himself in certain pleasures, while warning her against the same, is as bad as the man who bids his wife fight on against an enemy to whom he has himself surrendered.
48. As to love of display, do you, Eurydice, read and endeavour to remember what Timoxena wrote to Aristylla. And you, Pollianus, must not expect your wife to refrain from showy extravagance, if she sees that you do not despise it in other |B| matters, but that you take a pleasure in cups with gilding, rooms with painted walls, mules with decorated harness, and horses with neck-trappings. You cannot banish extravagance from the women’s quarters when it has the free run of the men’s. You are at the right age to cultivate philosophy. Adorn your character, therefore, by listening to careful reasoning and demonstration in improving company and conversation. Be like the bees. Gather valuable matter from every source. Carry it home in yourself, and share it with your wife by discussing it and making all the best principles agreeable and familiar to her. While |C|
Thou unto her art father, and honoured mother, and brother,
it is no less a matter of pride to hear a wife say, ‘Husband, thou unto me art guide, philosopher, and teacher of the noblest and divinest lessons.’ It is studies of this kind that tend to keep a woman from foolish practices. She will be ashamed to be dancing, when she is learning geometry. She will lend no ear to the incantations of sorcery, when she is listening to those of Plato and Xenophon. When any one promises to fetch down the moon,[[41]] she will laugh at the ignorance and silliness of women who believe such things; for she will possess a knowledge of astronomy, and will have heard how Aglaonice, the daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly, thoroughly understood |D| eclipses of the full moon, how she knew beforehand the date at which it must be caught in the shadow, and how she thereby cheated the women into believing that she was fetching it down herself.
We are told that no woman produces a child without the participation of the man, though there are shapeless and fleshlike growths—called ‘millstones’—which form themselves spontaneously from corrupted matter. We must beware of this occurring in women’s minds. If they are not impregnated with sound doctrines by sharing in the culture of their husbands, |E| they will of their own accord conceive many an ill-advised intention or irrational state of feeling.