e women, I am sure, it belongs not either to
love or be loved." At this point our father told me he interposed, and
took Protogenes by the hand, and said to him:

"'This word of yours rouses the Argive host,'

and of a verity Pisias makes us to side with Daphnaeus by his extravagant
language, charging marriage with being a loveless intercourse, and one
that has no participation in divine friendship, although we can see that
it is an intercourse, if erotic persuasion and favour fail, that cannot
be restrained by shame and fear as by bit and bridle." Thereupon Pisias
said, "I care little about his arguments; but I see that Daphnaeus is in
the same condition as brass: for, just as it is not worked upon so much
by the agency of fire as by the molten and liquid brass fused with it,
so is he not so much captivated by the beauty of Lysandra as by his
association with one who is the victim of the gentle passion; and it is
plain that, if he doesn't take refuge with us, he will soon melt away
in the flame altogether. But I see, what Anthemion would very much like,
that I am offending the Court, so I stop." "You amuse us," said
Anthemion: "but you ought from the first to have spoken to the point."

Sec. VII. "I say then," continued Pisias, "and give it out boldly, as far
as I am concerned, let every woman have a lover; but we ought to guard
against giving the wealth of Ismenodora to Baccho, lest, if we involve
him in so much grandeur and magnificence, we unwittingly lose him in it,
as tin is lost in brass. For if the lad were to marry quite a plain and
insignificant woman, it would be great odds whether he would keep the
upper hand, as wine mixed with water; and Ismenodora seems already
marked out for sway and command; for otherwise she would not have
rejected such illustrious and wealthy suitors to woo a lad hardly yet
arrived at man's estate, and almost requiring a tutor still. And
therefore men of sense prune the excessive wealth of their wives, as if
it had wings that required clipping; for this same wealth implants in
them luxury, caprice, and vanity, by which they are often elated and fly
away altogether: but if they remain, it would be better to be bound by
golden fetters, as in Ethiopia, than to a woman's wealth."

Sec. VIII. Here Protogenes put in, "You say nothing about the risk we run
of unseasonably and ridiculously reversing the well-known advice of
Hesiod:

'If seasonable marriage you would make,
Let abou