Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/168

158 in which Socrates is represented as instructing our old friend Critobulus (see above, page 120), now a family man about forty years old. There is nothing specially Socratic in the instruction—the philosophy is that of Xenophon. The first point in housekeeping, we learn, is to have a good wife. She must be made so by her husband, being married in her fifteenth year. She must be taught by him that her main duty is to have a regard for property. She must learn to stow away things neatly, as on board ship, so that they may take up little room, and may be found when wanted. She must renounce painting and rouging, and must keep up her good looks by taking plenty of exercise within doors in the shape of household duties, such as kneading dough, making the beds, &c., in addition to going about to superintend the work of the slaves. No word is said of her reading, or sharing any intellectual pursuit with her husband; and altogether Xenophon's ideal of an Athenian wife is a flagrant case of "the subjection of women."

After the house comes the farm. Xenophon eloquently sets forth the praises of agriculture, but in the rules of the art he is little explicit. He rather lays it down that agriculture is the easiest of all arts to be learnt; that it is a mere application of common-sense; and that a successful farmer differs from an unsuccessful one, not in knowledge, but in care and diligence. All this has a very dilettante appearance. It contrasts strongly with modern ideas of agricultural chemistry, the application of geology, botany, and physiology to farming, and the constant improvement of machinery