Seven Against Thebes (180-208)

You intolerable things! I ask you, is this the best way to save the city? Does it hearten our army here besieged,

when you fall before the images of the gods that guard the city and shout and shriek—behavior that moderate people despise? May I never share my home with the female race, neither in time of evil nor in pleasant prosperity! When things go well for her, her boldness is unbearable,

but when she is afraid, she is an even greater evil for home and city. So now your cries as you rushed here and there in panicked flight have rattled the citizens into dispirited cowardice. The cause of the enemy outside our gates is excellently strengthened by your behavior, while we inside are ruined by our own people.

This is the sort of trouble you will have if you dwell with women. Now if anyone fails to obey my authority—whether man or woman or something in between—a sentence of death will be decreed for him and by no means whatsoever will he escape destruction by stoning at the people’s hands.

It is for the man to take care of business outside the house; let no woman make decrees in those matters. Keep inside and do no harm! Do you hear me or not? Am I speaking to the deaf?