Love in a close hand-to-hand combat, like a boxer, is not wise. For he sways even the gods as he wishes, and me myself also; and how should he not sway another woman who is such as I am? So that if I find fault with my husband caught with this disease, or with this woman the cause along with him of nothing that is disgraceful, or to me an evil, I am unquestionably mad.”[1] Such religious forbearance is not found in poetry only. It is inculcated on wives as a strict part of their duty by a female Pythagorean philosopher, Periktione, who wrote on the harmony of woman.[2] “For a wife,” she says, “ought to bear all the circumstances of her husband, whether he be unfortunate, or err in ignorance, or in disease, or in drunkenness, or have intercourse with other women, for this error is permitted to husbands, but no longer to wives, for punishment awaits them.” No doubt this indulgence conceded by Periktione is due partly to the idea, which does not belong to the earliest period of Greek life, that the wrong-doing of the wife introduced impurity into the breed of the citizen while the wrong-doing of the husband had generally no such effect. But there existed also the feeling expressed more generally in regard to human nature both of men and women by Dejanira. The sentiment disappears only before a philosophy such as that of Plato and Aristotle, which rose far above the common conceptions of the Divine Being. Both of these philosophers prescribe punishments for those who violate marriage, though their rules are not absolute but depend on circumstances. Plato says:[3] “And as to women, if any man has to do with any but those who come into his house duly married by sacred rites, whether they be bought or acquired in any other way, and he offends publicly in the face of all mankind, we shall be right in enacting that he be deprived of civic honours and privileges, and he be deemed to be, as he truly is, a stranger.” Aristotle[4] leaves a larger margin for the husband, but suggests that in certain circumstances of transgression the offending husband should be punished with loss of his rights as a citizen in proportion to the offence.