A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

CHAPTER XXVI
GREEK LIFE AND THOUGHT
I. Training the Wife
Did you yourself educate your wife to be all that a wife
should be, or when you received her from her father and
mother was she already proficient, well skilled to discharge
the duties appropriate to a wife?
Well skilled! (he replied). What proficiency was she
likely to bring with her, when she was not quite fifteen at
the time she wedded me, and during the whole period of
her life had been most carefully brought up to see and
hear as little as possible, and to ask the fewest questions?
or do you not think one should be satisfied, if at marriage
her whole experience consisted in knowing how to take the
wool and make a dress, and seeing how her mother's handmaidens
had their daily spinning-tasks assigned them?
For (he added), as regards control of appetite and selfindulgence,
she had received the soundest education, and
that I take to be the most important matter in the bringing
up of man or woman.
Then all else (said I) you taught your wife yourself,
Ischomachus, until you had made her capable of attending
carefully to her appointed duties?
That did I not (replied he) until I had offered sacrifice,
and prayed that I might teach and she might learn all that
could conduce to the happiness of us twain.
Soc. And did your wife join in sacrifice and prayer to
that effect?
283
Xenophon,
Economist, 7.
Socrates
asks this
question of
Ischomachus.
The wife's
training before
marriage.
Ischomachus
resolves to
teach his
wife.