Kitap 13
7
After Laurentius had said all this, Leonidas, finding fault with the name of wife (γαμετὴ), quoted these verses out of the Soothsayers of Alexis— Oh wretched are we husbands, who have sold All liberty of life, all luxury, And live as slaves of women, not as freemen. We say we have a dowry; do we not Endure the penalty, full of female bile, Compared to which the bile of man's pure honey? For men, though injured, pardon: but the women First injure us, and then reproach us more; They rule those whom they should not; those they should They constantly neglect. They falsely swear; They have no single hardship, no disease; And yet they are complaining without end. And Xenarchus, in his Sleep, says— Are then the grasshoppers not happy, say you? When they have wives who cannot speak a word. And Philetærus, in his Corinthiast, says— O Jupiter, how soft and bland an eye The lady has! 'Tis not for nothing we Behold the temple of Hetæra here; But there is not one temple to a wife Throughout the whole of Greece. And Amphis says in his Athamas— Is not a courtesan much more good-humour'd Than any wedded wife? No doubt she is, And 'tis but natural; for she, by law, Thinks she's a right to sulk and stay at home: But well the other knows that 'tis her manners By which alone she can retain her friends; And if they fail, she must seek out some others.
