No one has better depicted, and in a more delicate and sensible manner, the common duties of husbands and wives than Xenophon, who in this particular is a worthy pupil of Socrates, the one of all the ancient sages who best understood the duties of the family. Socrates relates in the following terms the conversation of Ischomachus and his wife,--a young married pair,--in which the husband instructs his wife in domestic duties.
"When she had become more familiar with me, and a closer connection had emboldened her to speak freely, I put to her something like the following questions: 'Tell me, my wife, dost thou begin to understand why I have chosen thee, and why thy parents have given thee to me?... If the gods give us children, we must consult with each other and do our best in bringing them up: for it will be a happiness for both of us to find in them the protectors and support of our old age. But from this day on, all that is in this house is ours in common; what is mine is thine, and thou hast thyself already put in common all that thou hast brought. We have but to count which has brought most; but we must well remember one thing, and that is, that it will be the one of us two who will best manage the common property that shall have brought the most valuable share of capital.'
"To this, my wife replied: 'In what can I assist thee? What am I able to do? All depends on thee. My mother told me that my task was to conduct myself well.'--'Yes, by Jupiter!' I replied, 'and my father also told me the same thing; but it is the duty of a well-behaving couple so to behave that they may be as prosperous as possible, that by honest and just means they may add new goods to those they have. The gods, forsooth, did well when they coupled man with woman for the greatest utility of mankind. The interest of the family and house demands work without and within. Now the gods, from the first, adapted the nature of woman for the cares and the works of the interior, and that of man for the cares and the works of the exterior. Cold, heat, travels, war, man is so constituted as to be able to bear all; on the other hand, the gods have given to woman the inclination and mission to nurse her offspring; it is also she who is in charge of the provisions, whilst man's care is to ward off all that could injure the household.