‘Dear wife, would you think me a good partner in our business if I were to make a display of unreal wealth, false money, and sham purples, wood coated with gold?’ ‘Nay, surely not,’ she replies. ‘And as regards my body, would you hold me as more lovable if I were to anoint myself with pigments and paint my eyes?’ ‘Nay, I would rather look into your eyes and see them bright with health.’ ‘Believe me, then, dear wife, I am not better pleased with this white powder and red paint than I should be with your natural hue.’ So after that day the young wife gives up cosmetics, and on her husband’s advice takes healthy exercise instead; the physical training he recommends being ‘to knead the dough and roll the paste; to shake the coverlets and make the beds.’ With one last anecdote we must end. Socrates asks his friend whether beside his practical wisdom he has any rhetorical and judicial skill. ‘Of course I have,’ says Ischomachus. ‘I am always hearing and debating cases in my own household. Yes, and before to-day I have been taken on one side, and have had to stand my trial, to see what punishment I should bear and what fine I should pay.’ ‘And how do you get on?’ says Socrates. ‘When I have the advantage of truth on my side, well enough; but when I have not truth with me I can never make the worse cause appear the better.’ ‘And how is that? Who is the judge?’ ‘_My wife._’ Ischomachus’ home, at least, is no doll’s-house. His wife is as far removed from the humble drudge with whom the ordinary Athenian was familiar as she is from the painted odalisque who to the Ionian was the ideal of the perfect woman. X.—ARISTOPHANES