People say so. They say truly: and since this is the case shall I not more sincerely evince my esteem for you by watching sedulously over my own health and well-being, and displaying to your gaze the natural hues of a manly complexion, than if, neglecting these, I presented myself with rouged cheeks, eyes encircled by paint, and my whole exterior false and hollow? Indeed, she replied, I prefer the native colour of your cheeks to any artificial bloom, and could never gaze with so much delight into any eyes as into yours—bright and sparkling with health. Then believe no less of me, said I; but be well persuaded that, in my judgment, there are no tints so beautiful as those with which nature has adorned your cheeks. The same rule indeed holds universally. For, even in the inferior creation, every living thing delights most in individuals of its own species. And so it is with man whom nothing so truly pleases as to behold the image of his own nature mirrored in another and a fairer form of humanity. Besides, false beauties, though they may deceive the incurious glance of strangers,[100] must inevitably be detected by persons living always together. Women necessarily appear undisguised when first rising in the morning, before they have undergone the renovation of the toilette; and perspiration, or tears, or the waters of the bath, will even at other times float away their artificial complexions. ----- Footnote 100: Cf. Lucian, Amor. § 42. Aristoph. Nub. 49. ----- And what, in the name of all the gods, did she say to that? inquired Socrates. What? replied the husband. Why, that for the future she would abjure all meretricious ornaments, and consent to appear decked with that simple grace and beauty which she owed to nature. At Sparta married persons, as in France, occupied separate beds; but among the Athenians and in other parts of Greece a different custom prevailed. The same remark may be applied to the Heroic Ages. Odysseus and Penelope, Alcinoös and Arete, Paris and Helen, occupy the same chamber and the same couch. The women in the Lysistrata of Aristophanes appealed to this circumstance in justification of their late appearance at the female assembly held before day, and Euphiletos in the oration of Lysias on Eratosthenes’ murder, who admits us freely into the recesses of the harem, confirms this fact, except, that when the mother suckled her own child she usually slept with it in a separate bed. At Byzantium also the same practice prevailed, as we learn from a very amusing anecdote. Python an orator of that city who, like Falstaff, seems to have been somewhere about two yards in the waist, once quelled an insurrection by a jocular allusion to this part of domestic economy. “My dear fellow-citizens,” cried he to the enraged multitude, “you see how fat I am. Well! my wife is still fatter than I, yet when we agree one small bed will contain us both; but, if we once begin to quarrel, the whole house is too little to hold us.”[101]