Socrates' Wife

Socrates, the great Greek philosopher widely considered to be the father of the Western philosophical tradition, really did have a wife. Her name was Xanthippe, and she was 35 years younger than her famous husband. Socrates was born in 470 BCE; Xanthippe in 435 BCE. She has come down in history as a terrible shrew, and is even mentioned by Petruchio in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, who refers to Kate "as Socrates' Xanthippe or . . . worse."

But few people have ever told Xanthippe's side of the story. What would her memoir be like were she to tell us herself? What was it like being married to a man so much older than she was and seen by many as something of a public nuisance? What was it like living in Athens during the nearly endless Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), in which Athens suffered terribly? Mostly, what was it like being an intelligent, able young woman in an era when women were not considered citizens and couldn't participate in most civic affairs? What would it be like to live with the irony that your city, Athens, is named after the goddess of wisdom, Athena, but you are not considered worthy to have a role in government? Now, Xanthippe tells her own side of things.