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Crit. So you wish me to set up as a breeder of young horses, (10) do you, Socrates?

(10) See "Horsemanship," ii. 1.

Soc. Not so, no more than I would recommend you to purchase lads and train them up from boyhood as farm-labourers. But in my opinion there is a certain happy moment of growth which must be seized, alike in man and horse, rich in present service and in future promise. In further illustration, I can show you how some men treat their wedded wives in such a way that they find in them true helpmates to the joint increase of their estate, while others treat them in a way to bring upon themselves wholesale disaster. (11)

(11) Reading {e os pleista}, al. {e oi pleistoi} = "to bring about

disaster in most cases."

Crit. Ought the husband or the wife to bear the blame of that?

Soc. If it goes ill with the sheep we blame the shepherd, as a rule, or if a horse shows vice we throw the blame in general upon the rider. But in the case of women, supposing the wife to have received instruction from her husband and yet she delights in wrong-doing, (12) it may be that the wife is justly held to blame; but supposing he has never tried to teach her the first principles of "fair and noble" conduct, (13) and finds her quite an ignoramus (14) in these matters, surely the husband will be justly held to blame. But come now (he added), we are all friends here; make a clean breast of it, and tell us, Critobulus, the plain unvarnished truth: Is there an one to whom you are more in the habit of entrusting matters of importance than to your wife?