At all times and in all places a wife ought to try to avoid any clash with her husband, and a husband with his wife, but they ought to be especially on their guard against doing this in the privacy of their bedchamber. The woman in travail and pain kept saying to those who were trying to make her go to bed, How can the bed cure this ailment which I contracted in bed? But the disagreements, recriminations, and angry passions which the bed generates are not easily settled in another place and at another time.

Hermione seems to speak the truth when she says,Euripides, , 930; Cf. also Hieronymus, , i. chap. xlviii. (vol. ii. p. 292 of Migne’s edition). Bad women’s visits brought about my fall. This, however, does not come about so simply, but only when marital disagreements and jealousies open not only a wife’s doors but also her hearing to such women. So, at such a time especially, a woman who has sense ought to stop her ears, and be on her guard against whispered insinuations, so that fire may not be added to fire,Cf. the note on 123 F supra. and she ought to have ready in mind the saying of Philip.Cf., 179 A and 457 F. A similar remark of Pausanias is quoted in , 230 D. For it is told that when he was being incited by his friends against the Greeks on the ground that they were being well treated, but were speaking ill of him, he said, What would happen, then, if we were to treat them ill? So when these back-biters say, Your husband treats grievously his loving and virtuous wife. Yes, what would happen, then, if I were to begin to hate him and wrong him?

A man whose slave had run away, on catching sight of the fugitive some time later, ran after him; but when the slave got ahead of him by taking refuge in a treadmill, the master said, Where else could I have wished to find you rather than here? A remark of the same tenor is attributed to Phocion by Plutarch, , 188 A, and , chap. x. (p. 746 E). So then let the woman who, on account of jealousy, is entering a writ of divorce, and is in a high dudgeon, say to herself, Where else would my rival like better to see me, what would she rather have me do, than feel aggrieved with my husband and quarrel with him and abandon my very home and chamber?

The Athenians observe three sacred ploughings: the first at Scirum Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, , pp. 166-8. in commemoration of the most ancient of sowings; the second in Raria,Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, , pp. 166-8. and the third near the base of the Acropolis, the so-called Buzygius Scirum was near Athens on the road to Eleusis; the Rarian plain was near Eleusis; the most convenient references regarding these sacred ploughings are Roscher, Buzyges, and Narrison and Verrall, , pp. 166-8. (the ox-yoking). But most sacred of all such sowings is the marital sowing and ploughing for the procreation of children. It is a beautiful epithet which Sophocles applied to Aphrodite when he called her bountiful-bearing Cytherea. Nauck, , p. 310, Sophocles, No. 763. Therefore man and wife ought especially to indulge in this with circumspection, keeping themselves pure from all unholy and unlawful intercourse with others, and not sowing seed from which they are unwilling to have any offspring,Cf. Plato, , p. 839 A. and from which if any issue does result, they are ashamed of it, and try to conceal it.

When the orator Gorgias read to the Greeks at Olympia a speech about concord,Cf. Diels, , ii. pp. 248-9 (, B 7-8). Melanthius said, This fellow is giving us advice about concord, and yet in his own household he has not prevailed upon himself, his wife, and maidservant, three persons only, to live in concord. For there was, apparently, some love on Gorgias’s part and jealousy on the wife’s part towards the girl. A man therefore ought to have his household well harmonized who is going to harmonize State, Forum, and friends. For it is much more likely that the sins of women rather than sins against women will go unnoticed by most people.