13a
He said that the shared partnership of life and the procreation of children is the chief purpose of marriage. For the man who marries, he said, and the woman who is married ought to come together for this reason, each with the other, so as to live together and to have children together, and to consider all things common between them and nothing their own, not even the body itself. For great indeed is the birth of a human being, which this pair brings to completion. But this is not yet sufficient for the man who marries, since it might come about even apart from marriage, through people simply coupling in another way, just as animals also couple with one another. Rather, in marriage there must by all means be a living together and a mutual care of husband and wife for one another, both in health and in sickness and on every occasion, since it is with a desire for this, just as for the procreation of children, that each enters upon marriage. Now where this care is complete, and those who live with one another provide it to each other completely, striving to outdo one another, this marriage is as it ought to be and worthy of emulation; for such a partnership is a fine thing. But where each looks only to his own interest while neglecting the other, or where, by Zeus, one of them is like this and lives in the same house but with his mind turned outward, unwilling to exert himself and breathe together with his yoke-mate, there the partnership must necessarily be destroyed, and things go badly for those who live together, and either they are completely dissolved from one another, or they keep a union that is worse than solitude.