He defended her successfully, and procured a verdict of acquittal; but we are not surprised to hear that his speech was marked by the strongest personal emotions, and even by tears. The dikasts were accustomed to such appeals to their sympathies, sometimes even to extravagant excess, from ordinary accused persons; but in Pericles, so manifest an outburst of emotion stands out as something quite unparalleled, for constant self-mastery was one of the most prominent features in his character. XANTIPPE. [B.C. 390.] BRUCKER. The woman who could teach Socrates the virtue of patience deserves to be remembered. Xantippe, concerning whom writers relate so many amusing tales, was certainly a woman of a high and unmanageable spirit. But Socrates, while he endeavoured to curb the violence of her temper, improved his own. When Alcibiades expressed his surprise that his friend could bear to live in the same house with so perverse and quarrelsome a companion, Socrates replied, that being daily inured to ill-humour at home, he was the better prepared to encounter perverseness and injury abroad. After all, however, it is probable that the infirmities of this good woman have been exaggerated, and that calumny has had some hand in finishing her picture; for Socrates himself, in a dialogue with his son Lamprocles, allows her many domestic virtues, and we find her afterwards expressing great affection for her husband during his imprisonment. She must, indeed, have been as deficient in understanding as she was froward in disposition, if she had not profited by the daily lessons which for twenty years she received from such a master.