I put my head down in my hands. “Very well, father,” I said meekly. ‘Very well. I will meet this old crank here in the courtyard tomorrow. It is true you have been patient with me. I know you do not want an ‘old maid’ living in your home!” Then I began to cry. I rarely cry, if you must know. But that day I did. I felt my whole life closing in about me. I longed for a world in which women could choose freely whom they were to marry, or whether they were to marry at all. I longed for it. But I knew it was never to be. It is like being in a trap with no way out. And I felt doubly bad because most women just accepted it! 

But I was not most women, and I knew that I was doomed to have to bear up under a whole system that I could not abide.

The next morning I was sitting in the courtyard as I had promised when this bug-eyed, barefooted old man stepped in. I knew he had been talking to my father. I looked up at him. I tried hard not to be absolutely disgusted. He was much older than I was, and none too clean. This was, indeed, the crank who held forth in the Agora with whomever might come by to argue with him. He had a reputation for being a pretty good rhetorician, but he was also considered a subject of jokes and derision.

“Hello,” he said, “You must be Xanthippe.”

“I am,” I said. “And you must be Socrates.”

“One and the same!” he said. “Do you mind if I sit down on the bench?”

There was only one bench in the courtyard, and I was sitting on it. I didn’t really want to sit next to him. I was afraid he was going to smell. But the bench was long enough that we could sit at a respectable distance from each other.

“No,” I said. “I don’t mind. Please, have a seat.”

“Ah, well, I shall. Thank you. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “What do you want to know?”

“Well,” he said, “you have something of a reputation as a sharp-tongued, self-willed young woman. Why would that be?”

“Because I am sharp-tongued and self-willed,” I said. “Why else?”

He smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Well, I like the sound of that! I hear you like to argue with your suitors. Is this so?”

“No, Socrates. I don’t like to argue with my suitors. I argue with them because so many of them are either drooling idiots or else lazy, dirty-minded rich boys.”

“Ah!” he said. “But I am neither a drooling idiot nor a lazy, dirty-minded young man. In fact, as you can see, I’m not a young man of any description.”

“No, you’re not,” I said. I said this with an edge of sarcasm in my voice. 

“You don’t like older men, I take it.”

“Generally not,” I said honestly.

“Well,” he said, “I cannot change my age. Nor can you change yours. So we’ll have to converse together with the knowledge that our ages are very different.”

“I suppose so,” I said glumly. He was beginning to tire me. He had the reputation of being a crank, but at the same time, he had quite a following of students. So he had the reputation of being something of a sage, a kind of cranky old wise man. I wasn’t (yet) seeing any of that.

“Ah, dear girl! Don’t be so glum. Tell me, do you know of Democritus theory of the atom?”

I was surprised. But I knew right away that my father had put him up to this. “Did my father tell you to ask me that question?”

Now, his eyebrows went up and he looked at me. “And why would your father tell me to ask you that question? No, is the answer. Your father never said anything to me about mentioning Democritus to you. So tell me, have you heard of this theory?”

“I have,” I said. “It is the theory that all matter as we know it is made up of indivisible particles we call ‘atoms.’ These atoms then combine differently to form the various substances we see around us.”

“And what do you think of this theory?”

“Well,” I said, “I think it’s plausible. But I must tell you, I am more drawn to the theory of Empedocles, that all visible reality is comprised of four basic elements: earth, air, fire and water. Don’t you think that’s somewhat more plausible?”

“Not really, no,” he said. “I think there’s some sense to it. For example, everyone knows that our own bodies are mostly water. This one can see when a person dies and then, if he is left in the desert, he shrivels up into a wrinkled old corpse. All the water is gone. So I suppose that there could be various substances making up the world, but I prefer the atomist theory. Tiny particles! But you can arrange them in an infinite number of ways, and so come up with everything from rocks to trees to horses to people.”

— Excerpt from Chapter Two: The Dialogue of Marital Possibilities