certainly not a bit older than
her rivals, and has no grey hairs, as some of those who consort with
Baccho have. And if their union is seasonable, who knows but that she
may be a better partner for him than any young woman? For young couples
do not blend and mix well together, and it takes a long time and is not
an easy process for them to divest themselves of their pride and spirit,
and at first there's a good deal of dirty weather and they don't pull
well together, and this is oftenest the case when there's love on both
sides, and, just as a storm wrecks the ship if no pilot is on board, so
their marriage is trouble and confusion, neither party knowing how
either to rule or to give way properly. And if the baby is under the
nurse, and the boy under the master, and the lad under the master of the
gymnasium, and the youth under his lover, and the full-grown man under
the law and magistrate, and no one is his own master and exempt from
obedience to someone, what wonder would it be if a sensible woman rather
older than her husband would direct well the life of a young man, being
useful to him by reason of her superior wisdom, and acceptable to him
for her sweetness and gentleness? And to sum up the whole matter," said
he, "we Boeotians ought to revere Hercules, and so find no fault in any
inequality of age in marriages, seeing that he gave his own wife Megara
in marriage to Iolaus, though he was only sixteen and she
three-and-thirty."[79]

Sec. X. As the conversation was going on, our father said that a friend of
Pisias came galloping up from the town to report an act of marvellous
audacity. Ismenodora, it appears, thinking Baccho had no personal
dislike to the match, but only stood in awe of his friends who tried to
dissuade him from it, determined that she would not let the young fellow
slip through her fingers. Accordingly, she sent for the most active and
intimate[80] of her male friends, and for some of her female cronies,
and instructed them as to what part they should play, and waited for the
hour when Baccho was accustomed regularly to pass by her house on his
way to the wrestling-school. And as he passed by on this occasion with
two or three of his companions, anointed for the exercise, Ismenodora
met him at the door and just touched his cloak, and her friends rushed
out all together and prettily seized the pretty fellow as he was in his
cloak and jersey,[81] and hurried him into the house and at once locked
the