angry must soon cool down. For it is
better for a father to be hot-tempered than sullen, for to continue
hostile and irreconcilable looks like hating one's son. And it is good
to seem not to notice some faults, but to extend to them the weak sight
and deafness of old age, so as seeing not to see, and hearing not to
hear, their doings. We tolerate the faults of our friends; why should we
not that of our sons? often even our slaves' drunken debauches we do not
expose. Have you been rather near? spend more freely. Have you been
vexed? let the matter pass. Has your son deceived you by the help of a
slave? do not be angry. Did he take a yoke of oxen from the field, did
he come home smelling of yesterday's debauch? wink at it. Is he scented
like a perfume shop? say nothing. Thus frisky youth gets broken in.[40]

Sec. XIX. Those of our sons who are given to pleasure and pay little heed
to rebuke, we must endeavour to marry, for marriage is the surest
restraint upon youth. And we must marry our sons to wives not much
richer or better born, for the proverb is a sound one, "Marry in your
own walk of life."[41] For those who marry wives superior to themselves
in rank are not so much the husbands of their wives as unawares slaves
to their dowries.[42]

Sec. XX. I shall add a few remarks, and then bring my subject to a close.
Before all things fathers must, by a good behaviour, set a good example
to their sons, that, looking at their lives as a mirror, they may turn
away from bad deeds and words. For those fathers who censure their
sons' faults while they themselves commit the same, are really their own
accusers, if they know it not, under their sons' name; and those who
live a depraved life have no right to censure their slaves, far less
their sons. And besides this they will become counsellors and teachers
of their sons in wrongdoing; for where old men are shameless youths will
of a certainty have no modesty. We must therefore take all pains to
teach our sons self-control, emulating the conduct of Eurydice, who,
though an Illyrian and more than a barbarian, to teach her sons educated
herself though late in life, and her love to them is well depicted in
the inscription which she offered to the Muses: "Eurydice of Hierapolis
made this offering to the Muses, having conceived a vast love for
knowledge. For when a mother with sons full-grown she learnt letters,
the preservers of knowledge."

To carry out all these precepts would be