Proverbs 21:9 [It is] better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house.
Ver. 9. It is better to dwell in a corner of the house top.] Their house tops were made flat by order of the law. The sense is, then, A man had better abide abroad, sub dio, under the sun exposed to wind and weather, yea, to crowd into a corner, and to live in a little ease, than to cohabit in a convenient house with a contentious woman, that is ever brawling and brangling, that turns coniugium into coniurgium by inserting the dogs' letter (r), and leading her husband a dog's life. Such a one was Zillah, Peninnah, Xantippe, the wife of Phoroneus the lawgiver, who upon his deathbed told his brother he had been a man happy if he had never married. a Aristotle b affirms, that he that hath miscarried in a wife, hath lost more than half the happiness of his life. Rubius Celer and Albutius Tertius were held happy among the Romans, because the former had lived with a wife three and forty years and eight months, the latter five and twenty years, sine querela, without quarrelling or contending. And this they gave order should be engraven upon their gravestones. See Trapp on " Pro 19:13 "
a Bruson, lib. vii. cap. 22.
b Arist. in Rhet.