{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/wikisource_Pythagoras_Source_Book_and_Library_Part_2_Chapter_12/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/wikisource_Pythagoras_Source_Book_and_Library_Part_2_Chapter_12","id":"wikisource_Pythagoras_Source_Book_and_Library_Part_2_Chapter_12","license":"Public Domain / CC-BY-SA (see source)","rights_basis":"wikisource_site_inclusion_policy","source":"wikisource","source_url":"https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Pythagoras_Source_Book_and_Library/Part_2/Chapter_12","summary":null,"tags":["Pages_with_contributor","Subpages"],"text":"PERICTYONE\n\nON THE DUTIES OF A WOMAN\n\nA woman should be a harmony of prudence and temperance. Her soul should be zealous to acquire virtue; so that she may be just, brave, prudent, frugal, and hating vain-glory. Furnished with these virtues, she will, when she becomes a wife, act worthily towards herself, her husband, her children and her family. Frequently also such a woman will act beautifully towards cities, if she happens to rule over cities and nations, as we see is sometimes the case in a kingdom. If she subdues desire and anger, there will be produced a divine symphony. She will not be pursued by illegal loves, being devoted to her husband, children and family. Women fond of connections with outside men come to hate their families, both the free members, and the slaves. They also plot against their husbands, falsely representing them as the calumniators of all their acquaintance, so that they alone may appear benevolent; and they govern their families in a way such as may be expected from lovers of indolence. Such conduct leads to the destruction of everything common to husband and wife.\n\nThe body should also be trained to moderation. in food, clothes, baths, massage, hair-dressing, and jewelry adornment. Sumptuous eating, drinkihg, garments and keepsakes involve them in every crime, and faithlessness to their husband and everybody else. It is sufficient to satisfy hunger and thirst, and this from easily accessible things; and protect themselves from the cold by garments of the simplest description. It is quite a vice to feed on things brought from distant countries, and bought at a great price. It is also great folly to search after excessively elegant garments, made brilliant with purple or other precious colors.\n\nThe body itself demands no more then to be saved from cold and nakedness, for the sake propriety, and that is all it needs. Men's opinions, combined with ignorance, demands inanities and superfluities. No woman should be decorated with gold, nor gems from India nor any other country, nor plait her hair artistically, nor be perfumed with Arabian perfumes, nor paint her face so that it may be more white or more red, nor give a dark tinge to her eyebrows and her eyes, nor artificially dye her gray hair, nor bathe continually. A woman of this sort is hunting a spectator of female intemperance. The beauty produced by prudence, and not by these particulars, pleases women that are well born. Neither should she consider it necessary to be noble, rich, born in a great city, have glory, and the friendship of renowned or royal men. The presence of such should not cause her any annoyance, but should they be absent, she should not regret them; their absence will not hinder the prudent woman from living properly. Her soul should not anxiously dream about them, but ignore them. They are really more harmful than beneficial, as they mislead to misfortune; inevitable are treachery, envy and calumny, so that their possessor cannot be free from perturbation.\n\nShe should venerate the Gods, thereby hoping to achieve felicity, also by obeying the laws and sacred institutions of her country. After the gods, she should honor and venerate her parents, who cooperate with the gods in benefiting their children.\n\nMoreover she ought to live with her husband legally and kindly, claiming nothing as her own property, but preserving and protecting his bed; for this protection contains all things. In a becoming manner she should bear any stroke of fortune that may strike her husband; whether he is unfortunate in business, or makes ignorant mistakes, is sick, intoxicated, or has connection with other women. This last is a privilege granted to men, but but not to women, since they are punished for this offence. She must submit to the law with equanimity, without jealousy. She should likewise patiently bear his anger, his parsimony, complaints he may make of his destiny, his jealousy, his accusations of her, and whatever other faults he may inherit from his nature. All these she should cheerfully endure, conducting herself towards him with prudence and modesty. A wife who is dear to her husband, and who truly performs her duty towards him, is a domestic harmony, and loves the whole of her family, to which also she conciliates the benevolence of strangers.\n\nIf however she loves neither her husband nor her children, nor her servants, nor wishes to see any sacrifice preserved, then she becomes the herald of every kind of destruction, which she likewise prays for, as being an enemy, and also prays for the death of her husband, as being hostile to him, in order that she may be connected with other men; and in the last place she hates whatever her husband loves.\n\nBut a wife will be a domestic harmony if she is full of prudence and modesty. For then she will love not only her husband, but also her children, her kindred, her servants, and the whole of her family, among which she numbers her possessions, friends, fellow-citizens, and strangers. Their bodies she will adorn without any superfluous ornaments, and will both speak and hear such things only as are beautiful and good. She should conform to her husband's opinion in respect to their common life, and be satisfied with those relatives and friends as meet his approbation. Unless she is entirely devoid of harmony she will consider pleasant or disagreeable such things which are thought so by her husband.\n\n\u00a0\n\nON THE HARMONY OF A WOMAN\n\nParents ought not to be injured either in word or deed; and whatever their rank in life, small or great, they should be obeyed. Children should remain with them, and never forsake them, and almost to submit to them, even when they are insane, in every allotted condition of soul or body, or external circumstances, in peace, war, health, sickness, riches, poverty, renown, ignominy, class, or magistrate's rank. Such conduct. will be wisely and cheerfully adopted by the pious. He who despises his parents will both among the living and the dead be condemned for this crime by the Gods, will be hated by men, and under earth will, together with the impious, be eternally punished in the same place by Justice, and the subterranean Gods, whose province it is to inspect things of this kind.\n\nThe aspect of parents is a thing divine and beautiful, and a diligent observance of them is attended by a delight such that neither a view of the sun, nor of all the stars, which swing around the illuminated heavens, is capable of producing any spectacle greater than this. The Gods are not envious in a case like this.\n\nWe should reverence parents both while living and dead, and never oppose them in any thing they say or do. If ignorant of anything through deception or disease, their children should console and instruct, but by no means hate them on this account. For no greater error or injustice can be committed by men than to act impiously towards their parents.","title":"Pythagoras Source Book and Library/Part 2/Chapter 12","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":1175}