48.

When Theophrastus thus discourses, are there any of us, Christians, whose conversation is in heaven and who daily say ¹“I long to be dissolved, and to be with Christ,” whom he does not put to the blush? Shall a joint-heir of Christ really long for human heirs? And shall he desire children and delight himself in a long line of descendants, who will perhaps fall into the clutches of Antichrist, when we read that ² Moses and ³ Samuel preferred other men to their own sons, and did not count as their children those whom they saw to be displeasing to God? When Cicero after ⁴ divorcing Terentia was requested by ⁵ Hirtius to marry his sister, he ⁶ set the matter altogether on one side, and said that he could not possibly devote himself to a wife and to philosophy. Meanwhile that excellent partner, who had herself drunk wisdom at Tully’s fountains, married ⁷ Sallust his enemy, and took for her third husband Messala Corvinus, and thus, as it were, passed through three degrees of eloquence. Socrates had two wives, Xantippe and Myron, grand-daughter of Aristides. They frequently quarrelled, and he was accustomed to banter them for disagreeing about him, he being the ugliest of men, with snub nose, bald forehead, rough-haired, and bandy-legged. At last they planned an attack upon him, and having punished him severely, and put him to flight, vexed him for a long time. On one occasion when he opposed Xantippe; who from above was heaping abuse upon him, the termagant soused him with dirty water, but he only wiped his head and said, “I knew that a shower must follow such thunder as that.” ⁸ Metella, consort of L. Sulla the ⁹ Fortunate (except in the matter of his wife) was ¹⁰ openly unchaste. It was the common talk of Athens, as I learnt in my youthful years when we soon pick up what is bad, and yet Sulla was in the dark, and first got to know the secrets of his household through the abuse of his enemies. Cn. Pompey had an impure wife ¹¹ Mucia, who was surrounded by eunuchs from Pontus and troops of the countrymen of Mithridates. Others thought that he knew all and submitted to it; but a comrade told him during the campaign, and the conqueror of the whole world was dismayed at the sad intelligence. ¹² M. Cato, the Censor, had a wife Actoria Paula, a woman of low origin, fond of drink, violent, and (who would believe it?) haughty to Cato. I say this for fear anyone may suppose that in marrying a poor woman he has secured peace. When ¹³ Philip king of Macedon, against whom ¹⁴ Demosthenes thundered in his Philippics, was entering his bed-room as usual, his wife P. 385 in a passion shut him out. Finding himself excluded he held his tongue, and consoled himself for the insult by reading a tragic poem. ¹⁵ Gorgias the Rhetorician recited his excellent treatise on Concord to the Greeks, then at variance among themselves, at Olympia. Whereupon ¹⁶ Melanthius his enemy observed: “Here is a man who teaches us concord, and yet could not make concord between himself his wife, and maid-servant, three persons in one house.” The truth was that his wife envied the beauty of the girl, and drove the purest of men wild with daily quarrels. Whole tragedies of Euripides are censures on women. Hence Hermione says, ¹⁷“The counsels of evil women have beguiled me.” In the semi-barbarous and remote city ¹⁸ Leptis it is the custom for a daughter-in-law on ¹⁹ the second day to beg the loan of a jar from her mother-in-law. The latter at once denies the request, and we see how true was the remark of ²⁰ Terence, ambiguously expressed on purpose—“How is this? do all mothers-in-law hate their daughters-in-law?” We read of a certain Roman noble who, when his friends found fault with him for having divorced a wife, beautiful, chaste, and rich, put out his foot and said to them, “And the shoe before you looks new and elegant, yet no one but myself knows where it pinches.” Herodotus ²¹ tells us that a woman puts off her modesty with her clothes. And our own comic poet ²² thinks the man fortunate who has never been married. Why should I refer to Pasiphaë, ²³ Clytemnestra, and Eriphyle, the first of whom, the wife of a king and swimming in pleasure, is said to have lusted for a bull, the second to have killed her: husband for the sake of an adulterer, the third to have betrayed Amphiaraus, and to have preferred a gold necklace to the welfare of her husband. In all the bombast of tragedy and the overthrow of houses, cities, and kingdoms, it is the wives and concubines who stir up strife. Parents take up arms against their children: unspeakable banquets are served: and on account of the rape of one wretched woman Europe and Asia are involved in a ten years’ war. We read of some who were divorced the day after they were married, and immediately married again. Both husbands are to blame, both he who was so soon dissatisfied, and he who was so soon pleased. Epicurus the patron of pleasure (though ²⁴ Metrodorus his disciple married Leontia) says that a wise man can seldom marry, because marriage has many drawbacks. And as riches, honours, bodily health, and other things which we call indifferent, are neither good nor bad, but stand as it were midway, and become good and bad according to the use and issue, so wives stand on the border line of good and ill. It is, moreover, a serious matter for a wise man to be in doubt whether he is going to marry a good or a bad woman. ²⁵ Chrysippus ridiculously maintains that a wise man should marry, that he may not outrage Jupiter ²⁶ Gamelius and Genethlius. For upon that principle the Latins would not marry at all, since they have no Jupiter who presides over marriage. But if, as he thinks, the life of men is determined by the names of gods, whoever chooses to sit will offend Jupiter ²⁷ Stator.