I say, therefore, that marriage is likewise advantageous. In the first place, indeed, because it produces a truly divine fruit, the procreation of children, since they will be assistants to us in all our actions (as partaking of our nature), while our strength is yet entire; and they will be good auxiliars, when we are worn out, and oppressed with old age. They will also be the familiar associates of our joy in prosperity, and sympathizing participants of our sorrows in adversity. Farther still, besides the procreation of children, the association with a wife is advantageous. For, in the first place, when we are wearied with labours out of the house, she receives us with officious kindness, and recreates us by every possible attention. In the next place, she produces in us an oblivion of our molestations. For those sorrowful circumstances of life which take place in the forum, or the gymnasium, or the country, and, in short, all the cares and solicitudes occasioned by converse with our friends and familiars, do not so obviously molest us, being obscured by our necessary occupations; but when we are liberated from these, return home, and our mind becomes, as it were, at leisure, then these cares and solicitudes approach, availing themselves of this occasion, in order to torment us, at the time when life is destitute of benevolence, and is solitary. Then, however, the wife being present becomes a great solace on this occasion, by making some inquiries about external affairs, or by referring to, and considering, together with her husband, something about domestic concerns, and thus, by her unfeigned alacrity, affords him a certain exuberance of pleasure and delight. But it would be too prolix to enumerate particularly the benefit of a wife in festivals, for the purpose of procuring sacrifices and victims; in the journeys of her husband, by preserving the family in a stable condition, and not suffering it to be entirely without a ruler; in paying proper attention to the domestics; and in the aid which she affords her husband when he is afflicted with disease. For it is sufficient summarily to say, that _two things are necessary to all men, in order to pass through life in a becoming manner, viz. the aid of kindred and sympathetic benevolence. But we cannot find any thing more sympathetic than a wife, nor any thing more kindred than children. Both these, however, marriage affords._ How is it possible, therefore, that it should not be most advantageous to us?