Book 1
1252b
Thus the female and the slave are by nature distinct (for nature makes nothing as the cutlers make the Delphic knife,Uncertain: possibly a dagger and a carving-knife in one. in a niggardly way, but one thing for one purpose; for so each tool will be turned out in the finest perfection, if it serves not many uses but one). Yet among barbarians the female and the slave have the same rank; and the cause of this is that barbarians have no class of natural rulers, but with them the conjugal partnership is a partnership of female slave and male slave. Hence the saying of the poets Eur. IA 1400.— ’Tis meet that Greeks should rule barbarians,— implying that barbarian and slave are the same in nature. From these two partnerships then is first composed the household, and Hesiod Hes. WD 405. was right when he wrote First and foremost a house and a wife and an ox for the ploughing— for the ox serves instead of a servant for the poor. The partnership therefore that comes about in the course of nature for everyday purposes is the house, the persons whom CharondasA law-giver of Catana in Sicily, 6th century B.C. or earlier. speaks of as meal-tub-fellows and the Cretan EpimenidesA poet and prophet invited to Athens 596 B.C. to purify it of plague. as manger-fellows.The variant reading ὁμοκάπνους, smoke-sharers, seems to mean hearth-fellows.
