stitions, for none of the gods are pleased with stealthy
and secret sacrifices on the part of a wife.

Sec. XX. Plato says that is a happy and fortunate state, where the words
_Meum_ and _Tuum_ are least heard,[163] because the citizens regard the
common interest in all matters of importance. Far more essential is it
in marriage that the words should have no place. For, as the doctors
say, that blows on the left shoulders are also felt on the right,[164]
so is it good[165] for husband and wife to mutually sympathize with one
another, that, just as the strength of ropes comes from the twining and
interlacing of fibres together, so the marriage knot may be confirmed
and strengthened by the interchange of mutual affection and kindness.
Nature itself teaches this by the birth of children, which are so much a
joint result, that neither husband nor wife can discriminate or discern
which part of the child is theirs. So, too, it is well for married
persons to have one purse, and to throw all their property into one
common stock, that here also there may be no _Meum_ and _Tuum_. And just
as we call the mixture of water and wine by the name of wine, even
though the water should preponderate,[166] so we say that the house and
property belongs to the man, even though the wife contribute most of the
money.

Sec. XXI. Helen was fond of wealth, Paris of pleasure, whereas Odysseus was
prudent, Penelope chaste. So the marriage of the last two was happy and
enviable, while that of the former two brought an Iliad of woe on Greeks
and barbarians alike.

Sec. XXII. The Roman who was taken to task by his friends for repudiating a
chaste wealthy and handsome wife, showed them his shoe and said,
"Although this is new and handsome, none of you know where it pinches
me."[167] A wife ought not therefore to put her trust in her dowry, or
family, or beauty, but in matters that more vitally concern her husband,
namely, in her disposition and companionableness and complaisance with
him, not to make every-day life vexatious or annoying, but harmonious and
cheerful and agreeable. For as doctors are more afraid of fevers that
are generated from uncertain causes, and from a complication of
ailments, than of those that have a clear and adequate cause, so the
small and continual and daily matters of offence between husband and
wife, that the world knows nothing about, set the household most at
variance, and do it the greatest injury.

Sec. XXIII. King