Plato allegedly said that wise men would marry (3 Plato 78) Epicurus, on the other hand, advised them not to (10 Epicurus 119). There is plenty of advice about conventional marriage. It is also doctrine that amongst the wise there should be a community of wives with free choice of partners, as Zeno says in his Republic and Chrysippus in his treatise On Government (and not only they, but also Diogenes the Cynic and Plato). Under such circumstances we shall feel paternal affection for all the children alike, and there will be an end of the jealousies arising from adultery. Polyandry is not mentioned, and it is not clear who should have a free choice of partners: Diogenes told us a lot about philosophers’ views on marriage, including the stoics’ views on polygamy or group marriage. He said that we ought to give our daughters to their husbands maidens in years but women in wisdom thus signifying that girls need to be educated as well as boys.Īttitudes to women, then, varied, as they do today. In previous posts we met Aristippus and Plato, both of whom included women in their lists of pupils. Respect for women is also demonstrated in attitudes towards women’s education. Nay more, he never lost control of his voice.ĭiogenes’s examples of respect for women include Antisthenes, for example, who said that ‘Virtue is the same for women as for men. Polemo himself had been defendant in an action brought by his wife, who charged him with cruelty owing to the irregularities of his life but that, from the time when he began to study philosophy, he acquired such strength of character as always to maintain the same unruffled calm of demeanour. Polemo was a spendthrift and drunk until he found philosophy, which seems to have given him extraordinary power: (2 Socrates 33) Polemon, depicted as a medieval scholar Someone asked him whether he should marry or not, and received the reply, “Whichever you do you will repent it.” Sometimes misogyny is cloaked in humor, with several of the philosophers’ one-line responses being worthy of music-hall comedians. The natural rulers are the males, not only among men, but also among the other animals for the males everywhere exert wide-reaching rule over the females. The following comment is not only misogynistic, but also badly observed: Plato, as we saw in part 2, was content to include women in his school, and yet he did not see a role for them in politics. The general themes include misogyny, as explored in part 2, but he also gave examples of respectful behavior towards women, and of the humor involved in negotiating congenial relationships. He quoted from wills and letters, and also from hearsay. His anecdotes and longer exploratory writing include references to wives, daughters, slaves and courtesans. However, his writings also reveal, sometimes unintentionally, women’s roles and attitudes to women in ancient times. Diogenes Laertius’s main intention was to write biographies of male philosophers.
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