Sexual life in ancient Greece : with thirty-two full-page plates

INCEST

Naturally, here and there many instances of degeneration occurred. Thus an Athenian is reproached by Andocides (De myst., 124) : “ Thereupon he married the daughter of Ischomachus and after he had lived with her scarcely a year, he also took her mother, lived with the mother and daughter, and kept both in his house.” Alcibiades is said to have acted even more madly, if we may believe what Lysias tells us, as already mentioned (p. 14).

In any case, public opinion disapproved of incest in general, as may be concluded from the numerous mythological stories in which it is represented as detestable. We need only recall the universally known and partly already discussed stories of CEdipus, who—certainly without suspecting i1tmarried his mother Iokasta, or of Caunus, who loved his sister Byblis.

Motives of incest were not seldom brought upon the stage, as by Euripides in the Molus (TGF., 365 ff.). he drama is not preserved but we know its object from the narrative of Sostratus. King /Eolus had six daughters and six sons, the eldest of whom, Macareus, was in love with his sister Canace and forced her to yield to him. When the father heard of it, he sent the daughter a sword with which she killed herself. With the same sword Macareus also then took his life. When in the drama the line occurred, ‘‘ For nothing is dishonourable or common, if only it pleases us,” there was an instant uproar in the theatre, while the spectators were indignant at such a frivolous outrage, until they were calmed by Antisthenes, who altered the verse: “‘ Dishonourable remains dishonourable, whether it pleases or not.”

The olus is also frequently blamed by Aristophanes as indecent. In another passage he has associated the adjectives “objectionable”? and “barbarian ’’ with the noun incest; but he had found the motif already indicated in Homer, who

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