Whoever, fleeing marriage and the sorrows that women cause, does

“Whoever, fleeing marriage and the sorrows that women cause, does not wish to wed comes to a deadly old age.” These words of Hesiod, the ancient Greek poet of Works and Days, speak from an age when gods still walked in men’s imaginations and wisdom was carved through hardship. To the modern ear, they may sound stern or even bitter, yet beneath them lies a profound truth about the nature of companionship, solitude, and the human condition. Hesiod, who lived in the age of toil and divine justice, sought to remind mankind that to shun union, to flee from the burdens of love, is to flee also from the richness of life itself.

For in the world of the ancients, marriage was not merely a contract between man and woman, but a covenant with destiny. It was a bond that joined the frailty of human longing to the eternal rhythm of creation — birth, struggle, renewal. Hesiod, who warned against both idleness and arrogance, understood that the man who rejects love for fear of pain seeks an easy peace, but finds only emptiness. To avoid the “sorrows that women cause” — which in his time symbolized the unpredictability of emotion, desire, and domestic labor — is to choose a barren comfort, a “deadly old age,” where the heart withers even before the body fails.

The wisdom of Hesiod does not glorify suffering but sanctifies it. For he knew, as all the wise have known, that sorrow and joy are twin sisters, and one cannot be embraced without the other. To marry, to love, to share one’s life with another, is to expose oneself to pain — but also to meaning. The one who avoids all entanglements may live safely, but safety without intimacy becomes a prison. It is not the woman who brings ruin, but the cowardice that refuses to face the storms of the soul. Hesiod warns not against women, but against fear of life.

Consider the example of Socrates, the philosopher whose wisdom shook the foundations of Athens. His wife, Xanthippe, was known for her sharp tongue and fierce temper, yet Socrates loved her still. When asked how he could live with such a woman, he replied, “She teaches me patience.” Through her, he learned the virtue of endurance and the art of peace within chaos. His marriage, far from tranquil, became his greatest discipline. Thus, Hesiod’s truth endures: those who embrace the struggle of union become tempered like steel; those who flee it remain soft and incomplete.

The “deadly old age” Hesiod speaks of is not merely the decay of the flesh, but the desolation of the spirit. It is the loneliness that comes to those who have known neither the quarrels nor the reconciliations of love, neither the ache of loss nor the sweetness of return. The man who lives only for himself dies long before his last breath, for he has no one to mirror his soul, no one to remember his laughter, no one to bury his heart in memory. In this sense, marriage is not a burden but a salvation — the divine answer to the human cry for connection.

And yet, Hesiod’s counsel is not blind devotion; it is balance. To marry without wisdom, to love without discipline, leads to chaos. But to avoid marriage altogether, to live untouched by love’s trials, leads to sterility of soul. The ancients believed that virtue lies between extremes — between the recklessness of passion and the emptiness of isolation. The man who walks that middle path, embracing both tenderness and toil, lives not in vain but in harmony with the world’s divine order.

So, my children, hear the lesson of Hesiod: do not flee love out of fear of its pain, nor reject companionship for the illusion of peace. The road of solitude may appear golden, but its end is silent and cold. Better to walk with another — through laughter and through strife — than to walk alone toward the twilight of one’s years. For when love wounds, it also awakens; when it burns, it also refines. And in that sacred fire, the soul learns the deepest truth: that only through union, struggle, and devotion does life gain its full measure of glory.