Sources: Aristotle's Politics

We've hit the household codes in Colossians in my Prison Epistles class, so it seemed an opportune time to input the selections of Aristotle's Politics that provide the most relevant cultural background. The translation is a free rendering based on Ernest Barker's 1946 translation.

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1.3.1 (1253b)
Since we have figured out... the elements from which the polis (city-state) is constructed, we need to first consider how the household should be managed, for every state is made up of households...

A complete household consists of slaves and freemen. But every subject of investigation should first be examined in its simplest elements. And the primary and simplest elements of the household are the connection of master and slave, that of the husband and wife, and that of parents and children.

So we must consider each of these connections and look at the nature of each and the qualities each ought to possess.

1.7.1-2, 6, 11 (1259a-b, 1260a)
... So there are three parts of the art of household management, the first of which we have discussed: the art of controlling slaves. The second is the art of exercising paternal authority, and the third is the art of exercising marital authority. It remains to discuss the last two and to discuss them separately, for while the husband as head of the household rules over both wife and children (and rules over both as free members of the household), he exercises a different rule in each case.

His rule over his wife is like that of a statesman over fellow citizens. His rule over his children is like that of a king over subjects. The male is naturally fitter to command than the female, except where there is some departure from nature. And age and maturity are similarly fitter to command than youth and immaturity.

In most cases where rule of the statesman's sort is exercised, there is an interchange of ruling and being ruled (which does not occur in regard to husband and wife)... The relation of the male to the female is permanently that in which the statesman temporarily stands to his fellow citizens...

The slave is entirely without the faculty of deliberation. The female indeed possesses it, but in a form which remains inconclusive...

We must therefore affirm what the poet Sophocles said of woman: "A modest silence is a woman's crown."