Jowett: wives

Socrates   : Yes, and mine, noble Alcibiades, to Daedalus, and Daedalus to Hephaestus, son of Zeus ! But take the lines of those people, going back from them : you have a succession of kings reaching to Zeus — on the one hand, kings of Argos and Sparta ; on the other, of Persia, which they have always ruled, and frequently Asia also, as at present ; whereas we are private persons ourselves, and so were our fathers. And then, [121b] suppose that you had to make what show you could of your ancestors, and of Salamis as the native land of Eurysaces, or of Aegina as the home of the yet earlier Aeacus, to impress Artaxerxes, son of Xerxes, how you must expect to be laughed at ! Why, I am afraid we are quite outdone by those persons in pride of birth and upbringing altogether. Or have you not observed how great are the advantages of the Spartan kings, and how their wives are kept under statutory ward of the ephors, in order that every possible precaution may be taken against the king being born [121c] of any but the Heracleidae ? And the Persian king so far surpasses us that no one has a suspicion that he could have been born of anybody but the king before him ; and hence the king’s wife has nothing to guard her except fear. When the eldest son, the heir to the throne, is born, first of all the king’s subjects who are in his palace have a feast, and then for ever after on that date the whole of Asia celebrates the king’s birthday with sacrifice and feasting : but when we are born, as the comic poet says, [121d] even the neighbors barely notice it, Alcibiades. After that comes the nurture of the child, not at the hands of a woman-nurse of little worth, but of the most highly approved eunuchs in the king’s service, who are charged with the whole tendance of the new-born child, and especially with the business of making him as handsome as possible by moulding his limbs into a correct shape ; and while doing this they are in high honor. [121e] When the boys are seven years old they are given horses and have riding lessons, and they begin to follow the chase. And when the boy reaches fourteen years he is taken over by the royal tutors, as they call them there : these are four men chosen as the most highly esteemed among the Persians of mature age, namely, the wisest one, the justest one, the most temperate one, [122a] and the bravest one. The first of these teaches him the magian lore of Zoroaster, son of Horomazes ; and that is the worship of the gods : he teaches him also what pertains to a king. The justest teaches him to be truthful all his life long ; the most temperate, not to be mastered by even a single pleasure, in order that he may be accustomed to be a free man and a veritable king, who is the master first of all that is in him, not the slave ; while the bravest trains him to be fearless and undaunted, telling him that to be daunted is to be enslaved. But you, [122b] Alcibiades, had a tutor set over you by Pericles from amongst his servants,who was old as to be the most useless of them, Zopyrus the Thracian. I might describe to you at length the nurture and education of your competitors, were it not too much of a task ; and besides, what I have said suffices to show the rest that follows thereon. But about your birth, Alcibiades, or nurture or education, or about those of any other Athenian, one may say that nobody cares, unless it be some lover whom you chance to have. And again, if you chose to glance at the wealth, the luxury, [122c] the robes with sweeping trains, the anointings with myrrh, the attendant troops of menials, and all the other refinements of the Persians, you would be ashamed at your own case, on perceiving its inferiority to theirs. Should you choose, again, to look at the temperance and orderliness, the facility and placidity, the magnanimity and discipline, the courage and endurance, and the toil-loving, success-loving, honor-loving spirit of the Spartans, you would count yourself but a child[122d] in all these things. If again you regard wealth, and think yourself something in that way, I must not keep silence on this point either, if you are to realize where you stand. For in this respect you have only to look at the wealth of the Spartans, and you will perceive that our riches here are far inferior to theirs. Think of all the land that they have both in their own and in the Messenian country : not one of our estates could compete with theirs in extent and excellence, nor again in ownership of slaves, and especially of those of the helot class, nor yet of horses, [122e] nor of all the flocks and herds that graze in Messene. However, I pass over all these things : but there is more gold and silver privately held in Lacedaemon than in the whole of Greece ; for during many generations treasure has been passing in to them from every part of Greece, and often from the barbarians also, but not passing out to anyone ; and just as in the fable of Aesop  , [123a] where the fox remarked to the lion on the direction of the footmarks, the traces of the money going into Lacedaemon are clear enough, but nowhere are any to be seen of it coming out ; so that one can be pretty sure that those people are the richest of the Greeks in gold and silver, and that among themselves the richest is the king ; for the largest and most numerous receipts of the kind are those of the kings, [123b] and besides there is the levy of the royal tribute in no slight amount, which the Spartans pay to their kings. Now, the Spartan fortunes, though great compared with the wealth of other Greeks, are nought beside that of the Persians and their king. For I myself was once told by a trustworthy person, who had been up to their court, that he traversed a very large tract of excellent land, nearly a day’s journey, which the inhabitants called the girdle of the king’s wife, and another which was similarly called her veil ; [123c] and many other fine and fertile regions reserved for the adornment of the consort ; and each of these regions was named after some part of her apparel. So I imagine, if someone should say to the king’s mother Amestris, who was wife of Xerxes, "The son of Deinomache intends to challenge your son ; the mother’s dresses are worth perhaps fifty minae at the outside, while the son has under three hundred acres at Erchiae," she would wonder to what on earth this [123d] Alcibiades could be trusting, that he proposed to contend against Artaxerxes ; and I expect she would remark — "The only possible things that the man can be trusting to for his enterprise are industry and wisdom ; for these are the only things of any account among the Greeks." Whereas if she were informed that this Alcibiades who is actually making such an attempt is, in the first place, as yet barely twenty years old, and secondly, altogether uneducated ; and further, that when his lover tells him that he must first learn, and take pains over himself, and practise, [123e] before he enters on a contest with the king, he refuses, and says he will do very well as he is ; I expect she would ask in surprise, "On what, then, can the youngster rely ?" And if we told her, "On beauty, stature, birth, wealth, and mental gifts," she would conclude we were mad, Alcibiades, when she compared the advantages of her own people in all these respects. And I imagine that even Lampido, daughter of Leotychides [124a] and wife of Archidamus and mother of Agis, who have all been kings, would wonder in the same way, when she compared her people’s resources, at your intention of having a contest with her son despite your bad upbringing. And yet, does it not strike you as disgraceful that our enemies’ wives should have a better idea of the qualities that we need for an attempt against them than we have ourselves ? Ah, my remarkable friend, listen to me and the Delphic motto, [124b] "Know thyself" ; for these people are our competitors, not those whom you think ; and there is nothing that will give us ascendancy over them save only pains and skill. If you are found wanting in these, you will be found wanting also in achievement of renown among Greeks and barbarians both ; and of this I observe you to be more enamored than anyone else ever was of anything. ALCIBIADES I

Of such a character we request our friends to be, [248b] and desire them to appear, even as we now display ourselves as such, being neither aggrieved nor alarmed overmuch if so be that at this present crisis we must die. We beseech both fathers and mothers to pass the rest of their lives holding to this same conviction, and to be well assured that it is not by mourning and lamenting us that they will gratify us most ; nay, if the dead [248c] have any perception of the living, it is thus that they would gratify us least, by debasing themselves and bearing their sorrows with a heavy heart ; whereas by a light-hearted and temperate demeanor they would gratify us most. As for our own fortunes, they have already reached that climax which is the noblest of all for mortal men ; wherefore it is more fitting to magnify than to mourn them. But to our wives and children let them give care and nurture and devote their mind to them ; for thus they will best forget their ill fortune and live a life that is nobler and truer and [248d] more pleasing in our eyes. MENEXENUS  

Soc. And must not Homer have imagined the Trojans to be wiser than their wives ? CRATYLUS  

Soc. Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away ; for there must always remain something which is antagonistic to good. Having no place among the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the mortal nature, and this earthly sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can ; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible ; and to become like him, is to become holy, just, and wise. But, O my friend, you cannot easily convince mankind that they should pursue virtue or avoid vice, not merely in order that a man may seem to be good, which is the reason given by the world, and in my judgment is only a repetition of an old wives fable. Whereas, the truth is that God is never in any way unrighteous — he is perfect righteousness ; and he of us who is the most righteous is most like him. Herein is seen the true cleverness of a man, and also his nothingness and want of manhood. For to know this is true wisdom and virtue, and ignorance of this is manifest folly and vice. All other kinds of wisdom or cleverness, which seem only, such as the wisdom of politicians, or the wisdom of the arts, are coarse and vulgar. The unrighteous man, or the sayer and doer of unholy things, had far better not be encouraged in the illusion that his roguery is clever ; for men glory in their shame — they fancy that they hear others saying of them, "These are not mere good-for-nothing persons, mere burdens of the earth, but such as men should be who mean to dwell safely in a state." Let us tell them that they are all the more truly what they do not think they are because they do not know it ; for they do not know the penalty of injustice, which above all things they ought to know — not stripes and death, as they suppose, which evil-doers often escape, but a penalty which cannot be escaped. THEAETETUS  

Soc. And what about the procreation of children ? Or rather not the proposal too singular to be forgotten ? for all wives and children were to be in common, to the intent that no one should ever know his own child, but they were to imagine that they were all one family ; those who were within a suitable limit of age were to be brothers and sisters, those who were of an elder generation parents and grandparents, and those of a younger children and grandchildren. TIMAEUS  

The palaces in the interior of the citadel were constructed on this wise : — in the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Poseidon, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by an enclosure of gold ; this was the spot where the family of the ten princes first saw the light, and thither the people annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season from all the ten portions, to be an offering to each of the ten. Here was Poseidon’s own temple which was a stadium in length, and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance. All the outside of the temple, with the exception of the pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, curiously wrought everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum ; and all the other parts, the walls and pillars and floor, they coated with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues of gold : there was the god himself standing in a chariot — the charioteer of six winged horses — and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head ; around him there were a hundred Nereids riding on dolphins, for such was thought to be the number of them by the men of those days. There were also in the interior of the temple other images which had been dedicated by private persons. And around the temple on the outside were placed statues of gold of all the descendants of the ten kings and of their wives, and there were many other great offerings of kings and of private persons, coming both from the city itself and from the foreign cities over which they held sway. There was an altar too, which in size and workmanship corresponded to this magnificence, and the palaces, in like manner, answered to the greatness of the kingdom and the glory of the temple. CRITIAS  

Let this then be our exhortation concerning marriage, and let us remember what was said before — that a man should cling to immortality, and leave behind him children’s children to be the servants of God in his place for ever. All this and much more may be truly said by way of prelude about the duty of marriage. But if a man will not listen and remains unsocial and alien among his fellow-citizens, and is still unmarried at thirty-five years of age, let him pay a yearly fine ; — he who of the highest class shall pay a fine of a hundred drachmae, and he who is of the second dass a fine of seventy drachmae ; the third class shall pay sixty drachmae, and the fourth thirty drachmae, and let the money be sacred to Here ; he who does not pay the fine annually shall owe ten times the sum, which the treasurer of the goddess shall exact ; and if he fails in doing so, let him be answerable and give an account of the. money at his audit. He who refuses to marry shall be thus punished in money, and also be deprived of all honour which the younger show to the elder ; let no young man voluntarily obey him, and if he attempt to punish any one, let every one come to the rescue and defend the injured person, and he who is present and does not come to the rescue, shall be pronounced by the law to be a coward and a bad citizen. Of the marriage portion I have already spoken ; and again I say for the instruction of poor men that he who neither gives nor receives a dowry on account of poverty, has a compensation ; for the citizens of our state are provided with the necessaries of life, and wives will be less likely to be insolent, and husbands to be mean and subservient to them on account of property. And he who obeys this law will do a noble action ; but he who will not obey, and gives or receives more than fifty drachmae as the price of the marriage garments if he be of the lowest, or more than a mina, or a mina and-a-half, if he be of the third or second classes, or two minae if he be of the highest class, shall owe to the public treasury a similar sum, and that which is given or received shall be sacred to Here and Zeus ; and let the treasurers of these Gods exact the money, as was said before about the unmarried — that the treasurers of Here were to exact the money, or pay the fine themselves. LAWS BOOK VI

Ath. Then we will first determine the number ; and let the whole number be 365 — one for every day — so that one magistrate at least will sacrifice daily to some God or demi-god on behalf of the city, and the citizens, and their possessions. And the interpreters, and priests, and priestesses, and prophets shall meet, and, in company with the guardians of the law, ordain those things which the legislator of necessity omits ; and I may remark that they are the very persons who ought to take note of what is omitted. The law will say that there are twelve feasts dedicated to the twelve Gods, after whom the several tribes are named ; and that to each of them they shall sacrifice every month, and appoint choruses, and musical and gymnastic contests, assigning them so as to suit the Gods and seasons of the year. And they shall have festivals for women, distinguishing those which ought to be separated from the men’s festivals, and those which ought not. Further, they shall not confuse the infernal deities and their rites with the Gods who are termed heavenly and their rites, but shall separate them, giving to Pluto his own in the twelfth month, which is sacred to him, according to the law. To such a deity warlike men should entertain no aversion, but they should honour him as being always the best friend of man. For the connection of soul and body is no way better than the dissolution of them, as I am ready to maintain quite seriously. Moreover, those who would regulate these matters rightly should consider, that our city among existing cities has fellow, either in respect of leisure or comin and of the necessaries of life, and that like an individual she ought to live happily. And those who would live happily should in the first place do no wrong to one another, and ought not themselves to be wronged by others ; to attain the first is not difficult, but there is great difficulty, in acquiring the power of not being wronged. No man can be perfectly secure against wrong, unless he has become perfectly good ; and cities are like individuals in this, for a city if good has a life of peace, but if evil, a life of war within and without. Wherefore the citizens ought to practise war — not in time of war, but rather while they are at peace. And every city which has any sense, should take the field at least for one day in every month ; and for more if the magistrates think fit, having no regard to winter cold or summer heat ; and they should go out en masse, including their wives and their children, when the magistrates determine to lead forth the whole people, or in separate portions when summoned by them ; and they should always provide that there should be games and sacrificial feasts, and they should have tournaments, imitating in as lively a manner as they can real battles. And they should distribute prizes of victory and valour to the competitors, passing censures and encomiums on one another according to the characters which they bear in the contests and their whole life, honouring him who seems to be the best, and blaming him who is the opposite. And let poets celebrate the victors — not however every poet, but only one who in the first place is not less than fifty years of age ; nor should he be one who, although he may have musical and poetical gifts, has never in his life done any noble or illustrious action ; but those who are themselves good and also honourable in the state, creators of noble actions — let their poems be sung, even though they be not very musical. And let the judgment of them rest with the instructor of youth and the other guardians of the laws, who shall give them this privilege, and they alone shall be free to sing ; but the rest of the world shall not have this liberty. Nor shall any one dare to sing a song which has not been approved by the judgment of the guardians of the laws, not even if his strain be sweeter than the songs of Thamyras and Orpheus ; but only and Orpheus ; but only such poems as have been judged sacred and dedicated to the Gods, and such as are the works of good men, which praise of blame has been awarded and which have been deemed to fulfil their design fairly. LAWS BOOK VIII

Ath. A good objection ; but was I not just now saying that I had a way to make men use natural love and abstain from unnatural, not intentionally destroying the seeds of human increase, or sowing them in stony places, in which they will take no root ; and that I would command them to abstain too from any female field of increase in which that which is sown is not likely to grow ? Now if a law to this effect could only be made perpetual, and gain an authority such as already prevents intercourse of parents and children — such a law, extending to other sensual desires, and conquering them, would be the source of ten thousand blessings. For, in the first place, moderation is the appointment of nature, and deters men from all frenzy and madness of love, and from all adulteries and immoderate use of meats and drinks, and makes them good friends to their own wives. And innumerable other benefits would result if such a could only be enforced. I can imagine some lusty youth who is standing by, and who, on hearing this enactment, declares in scurrilous terms that we are making foolish and impossible laws, and fills the world with his outcry. And therefore I said that I knew a way of enacting and perpetuating such a law, which was very easy in one respect, but in another most difficult. There is no difficulty in seeing that such a law is possible, and in what way ; for, as I was saying, the ordinance once consecrated would master the soul of, every man, and terrify him into obedience. But matters have now come to such a pass that even then the desired result seems as if it could not be attained, just as the continuance of an entire state in the practice of common meals is also deemed impossible. And although this latter is partly disproven by the fact of their existence among you, still even in your cities the common meals of women would be regarded as unnatural and impossible. I was thinking of the rebelliousness of the human heart when I said that the permanent establishment of these things is very difficult. LAWS BOOK VIII

Therefore, those who have for the time being gained the upper hand, when they desire to secure their position, must by their own act and choice select from all Hellas men whom they have ascertained to be the best for the purpose. These must in the first place be men of mature years, who have children and wives at home, and, as far as possible, a long line of ancestors of good repute, and all must be possessed of sufficient property. For a city of ten thousand householders their numbers should be fifty ; that is enough. These they must induce to come from their own homes by entreaties and the promise of the highest honours ; and having induced them to come they must entreat and command them to draw up laws after binding themselves by oath to show no partiality either to conquerors or to conquered, but to give equal and common rights to the whole State. LETTERS LETTER VII

And if, I said, the male and female sex appear to differ in their fitness for any art or pursuit, we should say that such pursuit or art ought to be assigned to one or the other of them ; but if the difference consists only in women bearing and men begetting children, this does not amount to a proof that a woman differs from a man in respect of the sort of education she should receive ; and we shall therefore continue to maintain that our guardians and their wives ought to have the same pursuits. THE REPUBLIC   BOOK V

Then, as we were saying before, there is nothing unnatural in assigning music and gymnastics to the wives of the guardians — to that point we come round again. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And will not their wives be the best women ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Then let the wives of our guardians strip, for their virtue will be their robe, and let them share in the toils of war and the defence of their country ; only in the distribution of labors the lighter are to be assigned to the women, who are the weaker natures, but in other respects their duties are to be the same. And as for the man who laughs at naked women exercising their bodies from the best of motives, in his laughter he is plucking THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

The law, I said, which is the sequel of this and of all that has preceded, is to the following effect, "that the wives of our guardians are to be common, and their children are to be common, and no parent is to know his own child, nor any child his parent." THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

I do not think, I said, that there can be any dispute about the very great utility of having wives and children in common ; the possibility is quite another matter, and will be very much disputed. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

You suppose the wives of our guardians to have a fine easy time of it when they are having children. THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Such is the scheme, Glaucon, according to which the guardians of our State are to have their wives and families in common. And now you would have the argument show that this community is consistent with the rest of our polity, and also that nothing can be better — would you not ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Then the community of wives and children among our citizens is clearly the source of the greatest good to the State ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

Capital, I said. That the brave man is to have more wives than others has been already determined : and he is to have first choices in such matters more than others, in order that he may have as many children as possible ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK V

And so, Glaucon, we have arrived at the conclusion that in the perfect State wives and children are to be in common ; and that all education and the pursuits of war and peace are also to be common, and the best philosophers and the bravest warriors are to be their kings ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

Yes, I said ; and men of this stamp will be covetous of money, like those who live in oligarchies ; they will have a fierce secret longing after gold and silver, which they will hoard in dark places, having magazines and treasuries of their own for the deposit and concealment of them ; also castles which are just nests for their eggs, and in which they will spend large sums on their wives, or on any others whom they please. THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII

The accumulation of gold in the treasury of private individuals is the ruin of timocracy ; they invent illegal modes of expenditure ; for what do they or their wives care about the law ? THE REPUBLIC BOOK VIII