If you would avoid them, remove every cause of suspicion and jealousy: marry an ugly woman, fetch her from Cassandra’s temple, which used to be a sanctuary in Italy for all unattractive maidens. Then you can be sure that no man will cuckold you except out of spite. A citizen of Byzantium in Thrace had a filthy, dowdy, ugly slattern for a wife. Finding her in bed with another man, he cried out in astonishment, “O wretch! What necessity drove you here?” You poor wretch, what necessity brought you here? As well he might ask: for who could desire such a woman?

But this must be understood cautiously. Most err at the other extreme: they prefer wealth to beauty and, provided a woman is rich, do not care how she looks. But they are quite as much at fault as the rest. “You must consider a wife’s looks,” as John of Salisbury advises, “lest, on seeing another woman, you immediately think your wife repulsive”—like Chaucer’s knight who married an old woman:

And all that day he hid himself like an owl, So miserable was he that his wife looked so ugly.

Pay attention to your wife’s appearance, lest, when you see another woman, you come to loathe her, she becomes jealous, and you unfaithful.

If your wife is ugly and your maid beautiful, Do not make use of the maid.

I could perhaps give an example. “It is a burden to possess what no one thinks worth having”—a misery to possess what no man likes. On the other hand, “What many love is hard to guard.” And, as the boastful soldier bragged in the comedy, “It is an immense misery for a man to be too handsome.” Scipio never besieged Carthage so fiercely as these young gallants will beset your house: one with wit or good looks, another with wealth, and so on. If she is beautiful, says Guazzo, she will be suspected in any event.

Both extremes are bad: “A beautiful woman is quickly loved; an ugly one readily desires.” One is soon beloved, the other loves; one is hard to guard because she is proud and arrogant, the other not worth guarding. What should be done in this case? Ennius, in Melanippe, advises you as a friend to choose “moderate beauty, if you wish to preserve chastity intact”—one of a middling sort, neither too beautiful nor too ugly:

Nor does her beauty please me more than her chastity.

With old Cato, let her beauty be suitable, “neither exquisite nor mean,” between the two. I approve of this. But between the other two choices I decide with John of Salisbury, “other things being equal”—both equally wealthy and endowed—“it is more miserable to possess an ugly woman than to guard a beautiful one.” I would rather marry a beautiful woman and take the risk than be troubled with a blowsy one. But do as you please: I speak only for myself.

In any case, “as I advise again,” I would give you this counsel: whether she is beautiful or ugly, choose a wife from a good family and parentage, well brought up in a respectable place.

First consider in your mind her lineage, Her looks, her age, and above all the young woman’s Character, as she comes a new bride to your shared home.

A man who marries a wife from a disreputable inn or alehouse, buys a horse in Smithfield and hires a servant in St Paul’s—as the proverb goes—is likely to have a worn-out nag for his horse, a rogue for his servant and a thoroughly “honest” woman for his wife. “The daughter is presumed to resemble her mother,” says Nevizzano. Like mother, like daughter; “a bad egg from a bad crow”; a cat follows its kind.

Do you really expect a mother to pass on honest Manners, different from those she has herself?

If the mother is unchaste, in all likelihood the daughter will “take after her mother”—follow her in all her good qualities.

Do you believe that a daughter of bull-loving Pasiphae Will not herself become a bull-seeker?

If the mare trots, the foal will not amble. My last caution is that a woman should not give herself in marriage to a fool or an obviously melancholy man: jealousy is a symptom of that disease, and fools have no restraint. Justina, a Roman lady, was badly persecuted and later killed by her jealous husband. She had ordered this epitaph to be engraved on her tomb as a warning to others:

Learn from Justina’s example; learn, you fathers, Not to let your daughter marry a foolish man, and so on.

Learn, all you parents, from Justina’s case, Not to marry your children to fools.

After marriage I can give men no better advice than to treat their wives well. “What a married friend told me, I will tell you just as cheaply,” says Nicostratus in Stobaeus: to avoid future quarrels and for peace’s sake, “when you are in bed, beware of your wives’ flattering speeches at night and lectures behind the bed-curtains in the morning.” Let men also do their best to support their wives according to their means, as Patrizi repeatedly urges, and allow them reasonable freedom as time and place require.

Many women are driven to prostitution, as Nevizzano observes, because their husbands are so harsh and keep them so short of food and clothing: “poverty forces them to prostitute themselves.” Poverty, hunger and lack of means make them unchaste—or ill-treatment does; their husbands’ surly behaviour drives them to rebel, or their bad example leads the women to repay them in kind.

At the opposite extreme, some are too generous. As the proverb says, “The thrush shits its own ruin”: they make a rod for their own backs, as Candaules did with Gyges in Herodotus, praising his wife’s beauty himself and insisting that Gyges see her naked. By giving their wives too much freedom to wander about and a lavish allowance, they contribute to their own miseries. “Wives’ breaths smell very foul,” as Plautus jeers—they have ugly souls—and by their paint and cosmetics they provoke “their husband’s hatred,” their husband’s hate, especially:

When the husband’s lips are miserably smeared with sticky stuff.