as asked what most
became a wife; she answered: "to live entirely for her husband."--Again,
she was asked what was love; "the sickness of a longing soul," was her
answer. Once, while she was throwing off her mantle, it happened that
her arm was exposed. A gentleman, struck by its beauty and shapeliness,
exclaimed: "What a beautiful arm!" "But not for the public gaze,"
replied the wise Theano, while she hastily adjusted her robes. This
remark has been quoted by Plutarch, by two Church Fathers, Clement of
Alexandria and Theodoret, and by the Byzantine authoress Anna Comnena,
as a noteworthy apothegm, tending to promote womanly modesty and
reserve.

Theano was both prose writer and poetess. Of a long epic poem written by
her in hexameters we have not even a fragment; of her philosophical
works, there are still extant three letters of great charm and a
fragment of a philosophic and didactic work _On Piety_. This fragment is
too short for us to distinguish in it anything more than the highly
developed reasoning power of the author; in her letters, however,
discussing the rearing of children, the treatment of servants, and the
suppression of jealousy, the sentiments are forceful, and the style has
a familiar grace and tenderness. The relics that we have abound in
axiomatic expressions, emphasizing womanly virtues and manifesting the
lofty morality and high culture of the writer.

After the death of Pythagoras, Theano, in conjunction with her two sons,
Telauges and Mnesarchus, kept up the secret order; and Theano, as
teacher and as writer, promulgated her husband's doctrines. The time and
circumstances of her death are unknown.

Theano's three daughters followed in their mothers footsteps. Myia, the
most distinguished, had been so carefully reared and was of such
preeminent virtue that she was chosen as a virgin to lead the chorus of
maidens, and as a wife the chorus of matrons, at all the sacred
festivals of Croton, and she knelt at the head of her companions before
the altars of the gods. She was the wife of Malon, the celebrated
athlete, also of the Pythagorean order; their union was in all respects
a happy one. Myia was also a writer, but we have only one letter
attributed to her. Her work in the spirit of her father was so brilliant
that she spread the fame of his teachings throughout all Hellenic lands.
There was probably an extensive literature about her in antiquity, for
Lucian, several centuries later, says he had