"What shows you, for example, when and whom you ought to marry? When I was about to marry, I had a choice between three girls. These girls were selected from the rest because they were beautiful and rich, and my father was satisfied whichever one of them I chose. Out of the three I chose my Eulampia because she was more beautiful and more attractive than the others. But what will govern you in your choice?"
"In order to answer you," said Pamphilius, "I must inform you, first of all, that as according to our doctrine all men are equal before our Father, so likewise they are equal before us both in their station and in their spiritual and physical qualities, and consequently our choice (if I may use this word so meaningless to us) cannot be in any way circumscribed. Any one of all the men and women of the world may be the wife of a Christian man or the husband of a Christian woman."
"That would make it still more impossible to decide," said Julius.
"I will tell you what our elder told me as to the difference between a Christian and a pagan marriage. The pagan—you, for example—chooses a wife who, according to his idea, will cause him, personally, more delight than any one else. In this choice his eyes wander about, and it is hard to decide; the more, because the enjoyment is before him. But the Christian has no such choice; or rather the choice for his personal enjoyment occupies not the first, but a subordinate place. For the Christian the question is whether by his marriage he is going contrary to God's will."
"But in what respect can there be in marriage anything contrary to God's will?"
"I might forget the 'Iliad,' which you and I read together, but you who live amid poets and sages cannot forget it. What is the whole 'Iliad'? It is a story of violations of the will of God in relation to marriage. Menelaus and Paris and Helen and Achilles and Agamemnon and Chreseis—it is all a description of the terrible tribulations that have ensued and are all the time coming from this violation."
