Sec. XXVIII. Plato advised Xenocrates, a man rather austere but in all
other respects a fine fellow, to sacrifice to the Graces. I think also
that a chaste wife needs the graces with her husband that, as Metrodorus
said, "she may live agreeably with him, and not be bad-tempered because
she is chaste." For neither should the frugal wife neglect neatness, nor
the virtuous one neglect to make herself attractive, for peevishness
makes a wife's good conduct disagreeable, as untidiness makes one
disgusted with simplicity.

Sec. XXIX. The wife who is afraid to laugh and jest with her husband, lest
she should appear bold and wanton, resembles one that will not anoint
herself with oil lest she should be thought to use cosmetics, and will
not wash her face lest she should be thought to paint. We see also in
the case of those poets and orators, that avoid a popular illiberal and
affected style, that they artificially endeavour to move and sway their
audience by the facts, and by a skilful arrangement of them, and by
their gestures. Consequently a matron will do well to avoid and
repudiate over-preciseness meretriciousness and pomposity, and to use
tact in her dealings with her husband in every-day life, accustoming him
to a combination of pleasure and decorum. But if a wife be by nature
austere and apathetic, and no lover of pleasure, the husband must make
the best of it, for, as Phocion said, when Antipater enjoined on him an
action neither honourable nor becoming, "You cannot have me as a friend
and flatterer both," so he must say to himself about his strict and
austere wife, "I cannot have in the same woman wife and mistress."

Sec. XXX. It was a custom among the Egyptian ladies not to wear shoes, that
they might stay at home all day and not go abroad. But most of our women
will only stay at home if you strip them of their golden shoes, and
bracelets, and shoe-buckles, and purple robes, and pearls.

Sec. XXXI. Theano, as she was putting on her shawl, displayed her arm, and
somebody observing, "What a handsome arm!" she replied, "But not
common." So ought not even the speech, any more than the arm, of a
chaste woman, to be common, for speech must be considered as it were the
exposing of the mind, especially in the presence of strangers. For in
words are seen the state of mind and character and disposition of the
speaker.

Sec. XXXII. Phidias made a statue of Aphrodite at Elis, with one foot on a
tortoise,[172] as a symbol