Ah! (said I), Ischomachus, that is just what I should like particularly to learn from you. Did you yourself educate your wife to be all that a wife should be, or when you received her from her father and mother was she already a proficient well skilled to discharge the duties appropriate to a wife?
Well skilled! (he replied). What proficiency was she likely to bring with her, when she was not quite fifteen (6) at the time she wedded me, and during the whole prior period of her life had been most carefully brought up (7) to see and hear as little as possible, and to ask (8) the fewest questions? or do you not think one should be satisfied, if at marriage her whole experience consisted in knowing how to take the wool and make a dress, and seeing how her mother's handmaidens had their daily spinning-tasks assigned them? For (he added), as regards control of appetite and self-indulgence, (9) she had received the soundest education, and that I take to be the most important matter in the bringing-up of man or woman.
(6) See Aristot. "Pol." vii. 16. 1335(a). See Newman, op. cit. i. 170
foll.
(7) Or, "surveillance." See "Pol. Lac." i. 3.
(8) Reading {eroito}; or if with Sauppe after Cobet, {eroin}, transl.
"talk as little as possible."
(9) Al. "in reference to culinary matters." See Mahaffy, "Social Life
in Greece," p. 276.
Then all else (said I) you taught your wife yourself, Ischomachus, until you had made her capable of attending carefully to her appointed duties?
That did I not (replied he) until I had offered sacrifice, and prayed that I might teach and she might learn all that could conduce to the happiness of us twain.
Soc. And did your wife join in sacrifice and prayer to that effect?
Isch. Most certainly, with many a vow registered to heaven to become all she ought to be; and her whole manner showed that she would not be neglectful of what was taught her. (10)
(10) Or, "giving plain proof that, if the teaching failed, it should
not be from want of due attention on her part." See "Hellenica
Essays," "Xenophon," p. 356 foll.
Soc. Pray narrate to me, Ischomachus, I beg of you, what you first essayed to teach her. To hear that story would please me more than any description of the most splendid gymnastic contest or horse-race you could give me.
Why, Socrates (he answered), when after a time she had become accustomed to my hand, that is, was tamed (11) sufficiently to play her part in a discussion, I put to her this question: "Did it ever strike you to consider, dear wife, (12) what led me to choose you as my wife among all women, and your parents to entrust you to me of all men? It was certainly not from any difficulty that might beset either of us to find another bedfellow. That I am sure is evident to you. No! it was with deliberate intent to discover, I for myself and your parents in behalf of you, the best partner of house and children we could find, that I sought you out, and your parents, acting to the best of their ability, made choice of me. If at some future time God grant us to have children born to us, we will take counsel together how best to bring them up, for that too will be a common interest, (13) and a common blessing if haply they shall live to fight our battles and we find in them hereafter support and succour when ourselves are old. (14) But at present there is our house here, which belongs like to both. It is common property, for all that I possess goes by my will into the common fund, and in the same way all that you deposited (15) was placed by you to the common fund. (16) We need not stop to calculate in figures which of us contributed most, but rather let us lay to heart this fact that whichever of us proves the better partner, he or she at once contributes what is most worth having."