24
On another occasion, when a young man of the court had married a beautiful woman Pantica of Cyprus, according to Phylarchus, as quoted by Athenaeus, 609 C. of bad reputa- tion, Olympias said, That fellow has no brains; else he would not have married on sight. Marriages ought not to be made by trusting the eyes only, or the fingers either, as is the case with some who take a wife after counting up how much she brings with her, but without deciding what kind of a helpmate she will be.
25
Socrates Attributed to Bias by Stobaeus, Florilegium, iii. 79 ζ, and by Demetrius Phalereus, Sayings of the Seven Wise Men. Other authors (e.g. Diogenes Laertius, ii. 33) assign it to Socrates. used to urge the ill-favoured among the mirror-gazing youth to make good their defect by virtue, and the handsome not to disgrace their face and figure by vice. So too it is an admirable thing for the mistress of the household, whenever she holds her mirror in her hands, to talk with herself—for the ill-favoured woman to say to herself, What if I am not virtuous? and the beautiful one, What if I am virtuous as well? For if the ill-favoured woman is loved for her character, that is something of which she can be very proud, far more than if she were loved for her beauty.
