Women and wives

Accordingly, since I heard the name applied to Ischomachus by men, women, citizens and strangers alike, I decided to meet him, if I could.

I can also show you that husbands differ widely in their treatment of their wives, and some succeed in winning their co-operation and thereby increase their estates, while others bring utter ruin on their houses by their behaviour to them.

I think that the wife who is a good partner in the household contributes just as much as her husband to its good;

although, when a woman’s lapse is the result of some accident, husbands do not honour their wives any less on that account, provided that wives seem to reserve their affection unblemished.

Now unless a despot marries a foreign girl, he is bound to marry beneath him;

At any rate, many states have a law that adulterers only may be put to death with impunity, obviously for this reason, because they believe them to be destroyers of the wife’s friendship with her husband;

And as for the women, particularly if they chance to be young brides, like the wives of Niceratus here and Critobulus, how can they want any additional perfume?

This girl’s feat, gentlemen, is only one of many proofs that woman’s nature is really not a whit inferior to man’s, except in its lack of judgment and physical strength.

If that is your view, Socrates, asked Antisthenes, how does it come that you don’t practise what you preach by yourself educating Xanthippe, but live with a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be?