The Wicked Wife of Ischomachus - Again

95 THE WICKED WIFE OF 15CHOMACHU5 - AGAIN F. D. Harvey (EMC n. s. 3 [1984] 68-70) comments on the lady. Xenophon, he writes, eulogizes her while Andocides vilifies her. If both accounts are reliable, IIChrysilla, freed from the repressive attitudes of her late paternalistic, pompous and priggish husband, simply ran wi Id and made whoopeell • Perhaps, and perhaps, as Harvey suggests, IIXenophon is doing his best to clear the name and reassert the virtue of a woman he had known and respected II . There is another possibility. Xenophon and his audience would have known of the lady and her husband. That Ischomachus was paternal istic, pompous and priggish is no exaggeration. The question is whether Athenian readers would have considered subservience to him the proper attitude for a wife. They knew women in literature and in life. Penelope was an ideal, but hardly subservient. 50 with Antigone. Would Athenians have thought that Medea should have obeyed Jason meekly? This is hard to believe. It is, of course, dangerous to read one's own attitudes into a society as different from ours as that of ancient Athens. None the less I cannot believe that Xenophon1s Ischomachus would not have seemed to Athenians a pompous fool, or that his audience would not have relished the irony of his arrogant assumption that his young wife hung on his every word about make-up and keeping pots and pans in order. Knowing as they surely did her later conduct, the whole presentation must have seemed hilariously funny. Xenophon, it is true, is not noted for his humour, but his career shows that he was at least a fair judge of human nature. Can he possibly have considered Ischomachus, as he presents him, an ideal type for others to follow, or chosen this particular wife, whose 96 D. C. MACKENZIE history was so notorious, as his type of female virtue? Aristophanes would have died laughing. UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO D. C. MACKENZIE ...