What necessity rests upon me to run the risk of the wife I marry proving good or bad? “It is better,” [Solomon] says, “to dwell in a desert land than with a contentious and passionate woman.” He who is married knows how seldom we find a wife without these faults. Hence that sublime orator, Varius Geminus, says well, “The man who does not quarrel is a bachelor.” [In fact], “it is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop than with a contentious woman in a house in common.” If a house common to husband and wife makes a wife proud and breeds contempt for the husband, how much more if the wife is the richer of the two and the husband but a lodger in her house! She begins to be not a wife but mistress of the house; and if she offends her husband, they must part.
