ng and conversing
with those that can profit you. And for your wife gather honey from
every quarter, as the bees do, and whatever knowledge you have yourself
acquired impart to her, and converse with her, making the best arguments
well known and familiar to her. For now

"Father thou art to her, and mother dear,
And brother too."[186]

And no less decorous is it to hear the wife say, "Husband, you are my
teacher and philosopher and guide in the most beautiful and divine
subjects." For such teaching in the first place detaches women from
absurdities: for the woman who has learnt geometry will be ashamed to
dance, nor will she believe in incantations and spells, if she has been
charmed by the discourses of Plato and Xenophon; and if anyone should
undertake to draw the moon down from the sky, she will laugh at the
ignorance and stupidity of women that credit such nonsense, well
understanding geometry, and having heard how Aglaonice, the daughter of
the Thessalian Hegetor, having a thorough knowledge of the eclipses of
the moon, and being aware beforehand of the exact time when the moon
would be in eclipse, cheated the women, and persuaded them that she
herself had drawn it down from the sky. For no woman was ever yet
credited with having had a child without intercourse with a man, for
those shapeless embryos and gobbets of flesh that take form from
corruption are called moles. We must guard against such false
conceptions as these arising in the minds of women, for if they are not
well informed by good precepts, and share in the teaching that men get,
they generate among themselves many foolish and absurd ideas and states
of mind. But do you, Eurydice, study to make yourself acquainted with
the sayings of wise and good women, and ever have on your tongue those
sentiments which as a girl you learnt with us, that so you may make your
husband's heart glad, and be admired by all other women, being in
yourself so wonderfully and splendidly adorned. For one cannot take or
put on, except at great expense, the jewels of this or that rich woman,
or the silk dresses of this or that foreign woman, but the virtues that
adorned Theano,[187] and Cleobuline, and Gorgo the wife of Leonidas, and
Timoclea the sister of Theagenes, and the ancient Claudia,[188] and
Cornelia the sister of Scipio,[189] and all other such noble and famous
women, these one may array oneself in without money and without price,
and so adorned lead a happy and