40. There appears to be a truth in Hermione’s plea: [Sidenote: F] ‘_Tis wicked women’s visits have undone me._ This occurs in more than one way, but especially when connubial quarrels and jealousies offer to such women not only an open door, but an open ear. At such a time, therefore, should a sensible woman shut her ears, keep out of the way of slanderous whispers which add fuel to the fire, and be ready to apply the well-known saying of Philip. We are told that when his friends were trying to exasperate that monarch against the Greeks—on the ground that, though he treated them well, they abused him—he remarked, ‘Well, and what, pray, if we treat them badly?’ So, when the scandalizers say, ‘Your husband grieves you, in spite of all your affection and chastity,’ you [Sidenote: 144] should retort, ‘And what, pray, if I begin to hate and wrong him?’ 41. A man caught sight of a slave who had run away some time before, and gave chase. When the slave was too quick, and took refuge in a mill, he observed, ‘And in what better place could I have wished to find you than where you are?‘[40] So let a woman who is declaring for a divorce through jealousy say to herself, ‘And where would my rival be more glad to see me? And what would she be more pleased to see me doing, than harbouring a grievance, at feud with my husband, and actually abandoning the house and the marriage-chamber?’ [Sidenote: B] 42. The Athenians observe three sacred ploughings; the first at Sciron, in memory of the oldest sowing of crops; the second in the Rharian district; and the third—known as the Buzygian festival—close to the Acropolis. More sacred than all of these is the connubial ploughing and sowing for the procreation of children. It is a happy expression of Sophocles, when he calls Aphrodite ‘_fair-fruited Cytherea_‘. Man and wife should therefore be especially scrupulous in this connexion, keeping pure from unholy and unlawful intercourse with others, and forbearing to sow where they desire no crop to grow, or, if it does, are ashamed of it and seek to conceal it. 43. When Gorgias the rhetorician once read to the Greeks at Olympia a discourse upon peace and harmony, Melanthius exclaimed, ‘Here is a man giving us advice about peace and [Sidenote: C] harmony, when in private life he has failed to harmonize three people—himself, his wife, and his maidservant.’ For Gorgias, it appears, was enamoured, and his wife jealous, of the domestic. A man’s house ought to be in tune before he offers to set in tune a state, a public meeting, or friends. The public is more likely to hear of offences against a wife than of offences committed by her.