7
AUTOB. To this Pisias replied: I am willing enough that every woman should have her lover; but withal, it very much concerns Baccho to have a care how he entangles himself in Ismenodora’s wealth; lest, while we match him with so much grandeur and magnificence, we consume him to nothing, like tin among brass. For I must tell you, it would be a hard matter for so young a stripling as he is, though he should marry a plain and ordinary woman, to keep the upper hand, like wine mixed with water. But we see her already design superiority and command; else why should she refuse so many suitors of great wealth and noble extraction that court her daily, to woo herself a mere boy, that has but newly assumed the robes of manhood and is more fit to go to school than to marry. And therefore those husbands that are wise, without any admonition, out of their own foresight, clip their wives’ wings themselves; that is, they prune away their riches, that prompt them to luxury and vanity, and render them inconstant and foolish. For many times, by the help of these wings, they soar out of their husbands’ reach and fly quite away; or if they stay at home, better it were for a man to be chained with fetters of gold, as they chain their prisoners in Ethiopia, than to be tied to the riches of a wife.
8
AUTOB. However, said Protogenes, he has not hinted to us in the least the hazard we run of inverting absurdly and ridiculously the counsel of Hesiod, whose words are these: Take to thy home a woman for thy bride When in the ripeness of thy manhood’s pride: Thrice ten thy sum of years, the nuptial prime; Nor far fall short, nor far exceed the time. Four years the ripening virgin should consume, And wed the fifth of her expanded bloom.Hesiod, Works and Days, 696, translated by Elton.
