Indeed, poor wretch, thou art in fine state for marrying!And if he discovers a young man in the house of a rich and elderly woman, waxing fat, like a cockpartridge, in her service, he will remove him and give him to some marriageable maid that wants a husband. Thus much, then, on this head.
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[5]
And so our cities should not allow this irregularity, nor tolerate which age forbids and love does not invite, which do not fulfil the function of marriage, and defeat its object. Nay, to an old man who is marrying a young wife, any worthy magistrate or lawgiver might say what is said to Philoctetes1:
1 In a play of this name, of uncertain authorship. See Nauck, Trag. Graec. Frag. (2), p. 841. Plutarch cites two entire verses in Morals, p. 789a.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives. with an English Translation by. Bernadotte Perrin. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. 1.
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