XXXVII.
If you have assumed a character above your strength, you have both acted in this matter in an unbecoming way, and you have neglected that which you might have fulfilled.
XXXVIII.
In walking about as you take care not to step on a nail or to sprain your foot, so take care not to damage your own ruling faculty: and if we observe this rule in every act, we shall undertake the act with more security.
XXXIX.
The measure of possession (property) is to every man the body, as the foot is of the shoe.[1] If then you stand on this rule (the demands of the body), you will maintain the measure: but if you pass beyond it, you must then of necessity be hurried as it were down a precipice. As also in the matter of the shoe, if you go beyond the (necessities of the) foot, the shoe is gilded, then of a purple colour, then embroidered:[2] for there is no limit to that which has once passed the true measure.
XL.
Women forthwith from the age of fourteen[3] are called by the men mistresses (κυρίαι, dominae). Therefore since they see that there is nothing else that they can obtain, but only the power of lying with men, they begin to decorate themselves, and to place all their hopes in this.
- ↑ Cui non conveniet sua res, ut calceus olim,
Si pede major erit, subvertet; si minor, uret.
Horat. Epp. i. 10, 42, and Epp. i. 7, 98. - ↑ The word is κεντητόν 'acu pictum,' ornamented by needlework.
- ↑ Fourteen was considered the age of puberty in Roman males, but in females the age of twelve (Justin. Inst. I. tit. 22). Compare Gaius, i. 196.
