THE MOST FAMOUS NAGGING WOMAN

more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

Words starting with X are not easy to find ! After a brain raking of several days suddenly I found one ! Xanthippe ! The reason was because I met one lately. I remembered that women who were always jalous, arguing, and bad tempered were called "Xanthippes". I must have slept during history lesson because I only found out now thanks to this theme that she was the wife of Socrates whose name rang a bell in my mind, a little left over from school. He was a classical Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, whatever that means.

Xanthippe was a nagging, peevish, irritable, quarrelsome woman and wife. Nevertheless the couple managed to produce three sons. Apparently Socrates knew he was marrying a hag, but he did it on purpose to practice his patience ! A rather strange method in my opinion. But I am not a philosopher either.

Sokrates married Xanthippe, when he was nearly 50 years old. She was much younger than him, perhaps by as much as forty years. Apparently already at that time famous man liked to marry much younger women. Up to this date, he had avoided a marriage, and when asked someone his advice about marrying or not, he usually answered:

''Do what you want, in this or the other case, you have to repent'' or "Marry or marry not, in any case you'll regret it".

A well known anecdote about the angry Xanthippe is the one where she was so furious with her husband that she threw a bucket of washing water on him.

The philosopher then replied: after thunder comes rain.

She must have been quiet a woman that she became so famous thanks to her bad tempered character. Today to become famous you have to use other means !




My bucket would have been bigger !