lowed in Phoenicia, but
were contracted probably only when the woman had inherited something in
which her brother had no share.[1698]

+522.+ In Homer Zeus and Hera are brother and sister. Union of mother
and son is regarded as shocking, but not that of brother and
sister.[1699] Arete was niece and wife of Alcinous, and was especially
respected.[1700] In the case of OEdipus the union of mother and son,
by error, was terribly punished.[1701] In the tragedy of _Andromache_
marriages between mother and son, father and daughter, brother and
sister, are mentioned as characteristic of barbarians. Dionysius of
Syracuse, having lost his wife, married Doris and Aristomache on the
same day. With Doris he had three children and with Aristomache four.
His son by Doris, Dionysius, married Sophrosyne, his daughter by
Aristomache. Dion, the brother of Aristomache, married a daughter of
Aristomache.[1702] Whether these marriages were extraordinary in Sicily
we do not know. They may not represent the current mores as to marriage,
but only the shamelessness possible to a Sicilian tyrant. At Athens the
only limitations were on the ascending and descending relationships,
but it appears that in later times marriages between brother and sister
were disapproved.[1703]

+523.+ The term "incest" was applied at Rome to the case of a man
present at the purification of women, on the feast of the _Bona Dea_,
May 1.[1704] The sense of the word is, then, nearly equal to "profane."
The emperor Claudius married his niece Agrippina and made such marriages
lawful. Gaius[1705] restricted this precedent to its exact form,
marriage of a brother's daughter, not sister's daughter, and further
restricted it, if the brother's daughter was in any forbidden degree of
affinity.

+524.+ In the Ynglinga saga Niord takes his sister to wife, because the
law of Van-land allowed it, although that of the Ases did not.[1706]
Other cases in the _Edda_ go to show that the taboo on such marriages
was not in the ancient mores of Scandinavia.[1707] In the German poems
of the twelfth century it belongs to the description of the heathen
kings that they are fierce and suspicious towards all who woo their
daughters, and that they sometimes intend to marry their own daughters
after the death of their queens.[1708]

+525.+ Those Arabs of Arabia Felix who practiced fraternal polyandry
also formed unions with their mothers.[1709] Robertson Smith thinks that
this means their fathe