VI
[6arg] An extract from the speech delivered to the people by Metellus Numidicus when he was censor, urging them to marry; why that speech has been criticized and how on the contrary it has been defended.A number of learned men were listening to the reading of the speech which Metellus Numidicus, 1 an earnest and eloquent man, delivered to the people when he was censor, On Marriage, urging them to be ready to undertake its obligations. In that speech these words were written: “If we could get on without a wife, Romans, we would all avoid that annoyance; but since nature has ordained that we can neither live very comfortably with them nor at all without them, we must take thought for our lasting well-being rather than for the pleasure of the moment.” It seemed to some of the company that Quintus Metellus, whose purpose as censor was to encourage the people to take wives, ought not to have admitted the annoyance and constant inconveniences of the married state; that to do this was not so much to encourage, as to dissuade and deter them. But they said that his speech ought rather to have taken just the opposite tone, insisting that as a rule there were no annoyances in matrimony, and if after all they seemed sometimes to arise, they were slight, insignificant and easily endured, and were completely forgotten in its greater pleasures and
