38
Rightly therefore are they reprehended by Euripides, who introduce the harp and other instruments of music at their compotations. For music ought rather to be made use of for the mitigation of wrath and to allay the sorrows of mourning, not to heighten the voluptuousness of those that are already drowned in jollity and delight. Believe yourselves then to be in an error that sleep together for pleasure, but when angry and at variance make two beds, and that never at that time call to your assistance the Goddess Venus, who better than any other knows how to apply a proper remedy to such distempers; as Homer teaches us, where he brings in Juno using this expression: Your deadly feuds will I myself appease, And th’ amorous bed shall be the charming place Where all your strife shall in embracing cease. II. XIV. 205 and 209.
39
Though it becomes a man and his wife at all times to avoid all occasions of quarrelling one with another, yet is there no time so unseasonable for contention as when they are between the same sheets. As the woman in difficult labor said to those that were about to lay her upon her bed; How, said she, can this bed cure these pains, since it was in this very bed that my pleasures were the cause of all my throes? And still less will those reproaches and contests which the bed produces be reconciled at any other time or place.
