ON LOVE.

that bravery courage and magnanimity so conspicuous in many! And to say that they have a natural aptitude for all other virtues, but are deficient as regards friendship alone, is monstrous. For they are fond of their children and husbands, and generally speaking the natural affection in them is not only, like a fruitful soil, capable of friendship, but is also accompanied by persuasion and other graces. And as poetry gives to words a kind of relish by melody and metre and rhythm, making instruction thereby more interesting, but what is injurious more insidious, so nature, investing woman with beautiful appearance and attractive voice and bewitching figure, does much for a licentious woman in making her wiles more formidable, but makes a modest one more apt thereby to win the goodwill and friendship of her husband. And as Plato advised Xenocrates, a great and noble man in all other respects, but too austere in his temperament, to sacrifice to the Graces, so one might recommend a good and modest woman to sacrifice to Love, that her husband might be a mild and agreeable partner, and not run after any other woman, so as to be compelled to say like the fellow in the comedy, 'What a wretch I am to ill-treat such a woman!' For to love in marriage is far better than to be loved, for it prevents many, nay all, of those offences which spoil and mar marriage.