The Instructor 3.10.49

For youths, the gymnasium is enough, even if a bath is available; and indeed for men too it is perhaps not bad to prefer it to the baths, since it has something useful for the health of the young and instills zeal and ambition to care not only for good bodily condition but also for good spirit; done without being drawn away from better works, it is pleasant and not unprofitable. Nor are women to be excluded from bodily exercise here; but they should not be called to wrestling and running, but exercised in spinning, weaving, and helping the baker if need be. Women should also fetch from the storeroom with their own hands what we need; and it is not shameful for them to go to the mill; nor is it a reproach to a wife who keeps house and is a helper to be busy with the cooking, so that it may please her husband. If she shakes out the bed herself, hands her husband a drink when he is thirsty, and serves him food, she would be exercised most becomingly and for self-controlled health. The Instructor approves such a woman, who “stretches out her arms to useful work, and sets her hands to the spindle; she opens her hands to the needy, and stretches out her fruit to the poor”; who was not ashamed of the finest service, emulating Sarah in waiting on travelers. For Abraham said to her: “Hurry and knead three measures of fine flour and make cakes.” “And Rachel the daughter of Laban came,” it says, “with her father's sheep.”