48. As to love of display, do you, Eurydice, read and endeavour to remember what Timoxena wrote to Aristylla. And you, Pollianus, must not expect your wife to refrain from showy extravagance, if she sees that you do not despise it in other [Sidenote: B] matters, but that you take a pleasure in cups with gilding, rooms with painted walls, mules with decorated harness, and horses with neck-trappings. You cannot banish extravagance from the women’s quarters when it has the free run of the men’s. You are at the right age to cultivate philosophy. Adorn your character, therefore, by listening to careful reasoning and demonstration in improving company and conversation. Be like the bees. Gather valuable matter from every source. Carry it home in yourself, and share it with your wife by discussing it and making all the best principles agreeable and familiar to her. While [Sidenote: C] _Thou unto her art father, and honoured mother, and brother_, it is no less a matter of pride to hear a wife say, ‘Husband, thou unto me art guide, philosopher, and teacher of the noblest and divinest lessons.’ It is studies of this kind that tend to keep a woman from foolish practices. She will be ashamed to be dancing, when she is learning geometry. She will lend no ear to the incantations of sorcery, when she is listening to those of Plato and Xenophon. When any one promises to fetch down the moon,[41] she will laugh at the ignorance and silliness of women who believe such things; for she will possess a knowledge of astronomy, and will have heard how Aglaonice, the daughter of Hegetor of Thessaly, thoroughly understood [Sidenote: D] eclipses of the full moon, how she knew beforehand the date at which it must be caught in the shadow, and how she thereby cheated the women into believing that she was fetching it down herself. We are told that no woman produces a child without the participation of the man, though there are shapeless and fleshlike growths—called ‘millstones’—which form themselves spontaneously from corrupted matter. We must beware of this occurring in women’s minds. If they are not impregnated with sound doctrines by sharing in the culture of their husbands, [Sidenote: E] they will of their own accord conceive many an ill-advised intention or irrational state of feeling. As for you, Eurydice, above all things do your best to keep touch with the sayings of wise and good men, and to have continually in your mouth those utterances which you learned by heart in my school when a girl. By so doing, you will not only be a joy to your husband, but the admiration of other women, when they see how, at no expense, you can adorn yourself with so much distinction and dignity.