" In this passage, therefore, when the phrase "conspicuous for
the praiseworthiness of their lives" is used, it is evident that
the wise, in other words the philosophers, were so called less
because of their erudition than by reason of their virtuous lives.
In what sobriety and continence these men lived it is not for me to
prove by illustration, lest I should seem to instruct Minerva
herself.
Now, she added, if laymen and gentiles, bound by no profession of
religion, lived after this fashion, what ought you, a cleric and a
canon, to do in order not to prefer base voluptuousness to your
sacred duties, to prevent this Charybdis from sucking you down
headlong, and to save yourself from being plunged shamelessly and
irrevocably into such filth as this? If you care nothing for your
privileges as a cleric, at least uphold your dignity as a
philosopher. If you scorn the reverence due to God, let regard for
your reputation temper your shamelessness. Remember that Socrates
was chained to a wife, and by what a filthy accident he himself
paid for this blot on philosophy, in order that others thereafter
might be made more cautious by his example. Jerome thus mentions
this affair, writing about Socrates in his first book against
Jovinianus: "Once when he was withstanding a storm of reproaches
which Xantippe was hurling at him from an upper story, he was
suddenly drenched with foul slops; wiping his head, he said only,
'I knew there would be a shower after all that thunder.
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