# Socrates didn't like Xanitippe? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 8, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533 "2013-01-08T20:54:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![R3d\_Anonymous](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/aeb1de/32.png) [@R3d\_Anonymous](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/R3d_Anonymous)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/1 "2013-01-08T20:54:27Z")
“My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” So, he became a philosopher. Now Xanitippe did like him despite her verbally and physically abusing him, but doesn’t this quote prove Socrates didn’t like her back? ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/2 "2013-01-08T21:31:23Z")
Prove? That sounds like the earliest “Take my wife, please” joke ever written down. MIT likes students who demonstrate they understand humour, even if they do not possess any of their own. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/3 "2013-01-08T22:09:36Z")
They should have taken the show on the road; the bit where she emptied the chamber pot over him was the side-splitting finale. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/4 "2013-01-08T22:23:03Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > They should have taken the show on the road; the bit where she emptied the chamber pot over him was the side-splitting finale. And the punchline: “Xanthippe’s thunder sometimes results in rain.” ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/5 "2013-01-09T17:08:37Z")
She certainly had valid reason to dislike Socrates. He’s also the guy who argued that women got really intense and emotional during childbirth because that was the female equivalent of the male orgasm. If I tried that line on a woman, I’d consider myself to be getting off lightly if she just dumped a chamber pot on my head. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/6 "2013-01-09T18:29:53Z")
She was his meal ticket, so he damn well better have liked here. I think it is just a case of an old married couple having fun teasing each other. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/7 "2013-01-09T18:57:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > She certainly had valid reason to dislike Socrates. He’s also the guy who argued that _ **women got really intense and emotional during childbirth because that was the female equivalent of the male orgasm.** _ (emphasis added) If I tried that line on a woman, I’d consider myself to be getting off lightly if she just dumped a chamber pot on my head. I would like to see an eyewitness cite for this, meaning Plato or Xenophon only. Here is a something else from Socrates which might provide a basis for feminine ire: [_Theaetetus_ by Plato](http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/theatu.html) (from link): > [@](#): > > Dire are the pangs which my art is able to arouse and to allay in those who consort with me, just like the pangs of women in childbirth; night and day they are full of perplexity and travail which is even worse than that of the women. In other words, philospophy is more painful that childbirth. Actually, not a few college students who gave philosophy a try and then fled permanently from it might agree! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/8 "2013-01-09T21:18:46Z")
> [@](#): > > I would like to see an eyewitness cite for this, meaning Plato or Xenophon only. It’s from the _Symposium_. I’ll see if I can dig it up. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/9 "2013-01-09T21:30:03Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > She was his meal ticket, so he damn well better have liked here. How so? She may (_may_) have come from a wealthier family, but Socrates had a paying job. He was a stonemason (though admittedly one who took a _lot_ of of breaks for philosophy chat with the lads). Anyway, if someone really is married to someone as their meal ticket, that often does lead to resentment and dislike. ---
**Author:** ![Ace309](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ace309/32/1050_2.png) [@Ace309](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ace309)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/10 "2013-01-09T21:57:52Z")
He never quite got over Diotima. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/11 "2013-01-09T22:08:56Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > She certainly had valid reason to dislike Socrates. He’s also the guy who argued that women got really intense and emotional during childbirth because that was the female equivalent of the male orgasm. If I tried that line on a woman, I’d consider myself to be getting off lightly if she just dumped a chamber pot on my head. [Orgasmic Childbirth.](http://www.unassistedchildbirth.com/your-sensual-self/orgasmic-childbirth/) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/12 "2013-01-09T22:15:59Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > How so? She may (_may_) have come from a wealthier family, but Socrates had a paying job. He was a stonemason (though admittedly one who took a _lot_ of of breaks for philosophy chat with the lads). > > Anyway, if someone really is married to someone as their meal ticket, that often does lead to resentment and dislike. Little known fact is that she worked for a living as a sophist to pay the family bills. (That is a joke.) Big S lead a life of leisure harassing his fellow citizens verbally. That takes money. Notice the dialogues are all with rich people, not the cast of Monty Python pretending to be fellow stone masons. That took money. ---
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/13 "2013-01-09T22:49:30Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Little known fact is that she worked for a living as a sophist to pay the family bills. (That is a joke.) > > Big S lead a life of leisure harassing his fellow citizens verbally. That takes money. Notice the dialogues are all with rich people, not the cast of Monty Python pretending to be fellow stone masons. That took money. Most male Athenian citizens led lives of comparative leisure. The had slaves to do the hard work. But as Athenian citizens went, Socrates was pretty poor and had to do manual (skilled) work for his living. The fact that rich young men liked to hang out and chat with him (mostly just hanging out on the street) during his breaks, or even perhaps sometimes as he chipped away at the stones, does no imply or even suggest that he was at their level of wealth himself. It does not take money. (The lads were actually being cheap, getting for free from Socrates what they would have had to pay for from a sophist.) Incidentally, you do realize, do you, that Plato’s dialogues (and Xenophon’s too) are not documentary accounts of real events? They are at best fictionalized reconstructions of actual events, but probably mostly not even that. Socrates may have said something like some of the things that are attributed to him at some time or other, possibly sometimes even to the people he is presented as saying them to, and the dialogues may (perhaps) present his style of argumentation fairly honestly, but most of them almost certainly do not even accurately reflect his real philosophical views (but, rather, what Plato or Xenophon thought they ought to have been). ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 9, 2013, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/14 "2013-01-09T23:30:40Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Big S lead a life of leisure harassing his fellow citizens verbally. [Oh, bullshit artist!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl4VD8uvgec) ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/15 "2013-01-10T00:17:46Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Prove? That sounds like the earliest “Take my wife, please” joke ever written down. MIT likes students who demonstrate they understand humour, even if they do not possess any of their own. Cold, man, cold. GQ people are like elephants. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/16 "2013-01-10T02:30:32Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Most male Athenian citizens led lives of comparative leisure. The had slaves to do the hard work. But as Athenian citizens went, Socrates was pretty poor and had to do manual (skilled) work for his living. The fact that rich young men liked to hang out and chat with him (mostly just hanging out on the street) during his breaks, or even perhaps sometimes as he chipped away at the stones, does no imply or even suggest that he was at their level of wealth himself. It does not take money. (The lads were actually being cheap, getting for free from Socrates what they would have had to pay for from a sophist.) > > Incidentally, you do realize, do you, that Plato’s dialogues (and Xenophon’s too) are not documentary accounts of real events? They are at best fictionalized reconstructions of actual events, but probably mostly not even that. Socrates may have said something like some of the things that are attributed to him at some time or other, possibly sometimes even to the people he is presented as saying them to, and the dialogues may (perhaps) present his style of argumentation fairly honestly, but most of them almost certainly do not even accurately reflect his real philosophical views (but, rather, what Plato or Xenophon thought they ought to have been). I’m sure that you are correct. Socrates taught Plato to be the most important philosophical writer of all time over the din of him chipping and moving stone. And Xenophon to be a great general, Alcibiades to be an an enormous asshole, etc. etc. etc. None of these famous students were a full time job, nor the many more obscure students. Show us the stones Socrates masoned if he spent so much time on them. Socrates was famous, even among his detractors, like his friendly detractor, Aristophanes for being a full-time, meddlesome blowhard. He spent about as much of his life being a stone mason as Newt Gingrich spent being a full time professor of history. Now I’ve just put forth a lot of evidence that he spent his time teaching students who demonstrated their education by leaving works we still have today. And those things are perishable. Showeth me Socrates’ stones and I will consider him not a man of leisure. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/17 "2013-01-10T02:59:40Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Most male Athenian citizens led lives of comparative leisure… Another philosopher said that the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Doesn’t negate your point, however. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/18 "2013-01-10T03:03:07Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > …Showeth me Socrates’ stones and I will consider him not a man of leisure. How many stonemasons have ever left evidence of their identity on their work? Have _any_? And BTW although Alcibiades was unprincipled and treacherous he was the greatest Athenian military commander of the Peloponnesian War, I think undefeated as an admiral. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/19 "2013-01-10T19:30:44Z")
My point is that the evidence that exists suggests he spent his time yapping. And not while he was masoning stone as it would have been too noisy to yap and none of the depictions indicate him masoning. Also, only Athenian men who had slaves to do their work for them would have had leisure to yap. ---
**Author:** ![colonial](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/34f0e0/32.png) [@colonial](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colonial)\ **Post date:** [January 10, 2013, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533/20 "2013-01-10T20:52:56Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > My point is that the evidence that exists suggests he spent his time yapping. And not while he was masoning stone as it would have been too noisy to yap and none of the depictions indicate him masoning. Also, only Athenian men who had slaves to do their work for them would have had leisure to yap. There would be no point in sideline discussions of masonry, and rich people with slaves were not the only 5th century BC Athenians who had enough leisure time to take part in memorable intelligent conversation. Time required to actually speak the lines passed down to us by Plato and others would be what? - 40 hours? 80 hours? Given that Athens then had over 20 days of [official holidays](http://www.reneeoconnorfan.pixel51.com/xenaera/greekholidays/index.html) and that holiday-related activity usually would not have lasted all day and all night, I think it it reasonable to assume that there was plenty of time for philosophy during Socrates’ lenghty mature adulthood for anyone interested, even if weekend policy was not as good as ours. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/socrates-didnt-like-xanitippe/646533.md?page=2)