The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Philosophy
The Deipnosophists; or, Banquet of the Learned of Athenæus, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Athenaeus, of Naucratis
Civilization, Greco-Roman; Dinners and dining -- Greece; Greece -- Social life and customs; Homosexuality -- Greece
And beginning in this manner, one might fairly blame those who
attributed to Socrates two wives, Xanthippe and Myrto, the daughter
of Aristides; not of that Aristides who was surnamed the Just,
(for the time does not agree,) but of his descendant in the third
generation. And the men who made this statement are Callisthenes, and
Demetrius Phalereus, and Satyrus the Peripatetic, and Aristoxenus;
who were preceded in it by Aristotle, who relates the same story in
his treatise on Nobleness of Birth. Unless perhaps this licence was
allowed by a decree at that time on account of the scarcity of men,
so that any one who pleased might have two wives; to which it must be
owing that the comic poets make no mention of this fact, though they
very often mention Socrates. And Hieronymus of Rhodes has cited the
decree about wives; which I will send to you, since I have the book.
But Panætius the Rhodian has contradicted those who make this statement
about the wives of Socrates.
[Sidenote: HERCULES.]
3. But among the Persians the queen tolerates the king's having a
number of concubines, because there the king rules his wife like her
master; and also because the queen, as Dinon states in his history
of Persia, receives a great deal of respect from the concubines. At
all events they offer her adoration. And Priam, too, had a great many
women, and Hecuba was not indignant. Accordingly, Priam says—
Yet what a race! ere Greece to Ilion came,
The pledge of many a loved and loving dame.
Nineteen one mother bore—dead, all are dead![13]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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