Note 379 — Chapter I

According to Philo and to Diogenes Laertius, the Persians used to marry their mothers and sisters. Alexander abolished these incestuous marriages (see Brisson, p. 290). We know from Herodotus (I: 111) that Cambyses married his sister Atossa. According to Strabo, the law permitted the Magians union with their mothers. Plutarch, in the life of Artaxerxes, relates that this king took to wife his two daughters Atossa and Amestris; but his mother Parysatis (Pari-dokht, “daughter of a fairy”), at the very time she was engaging him to marry the first of his daughters, said that he must, in doing so, place himself above the laws of the country. Zoroaster, in the Zand books, recommends but the marriages between the children of brothers and sisters as actions deserving heaven. We observe that the author of the Dabistan speaks here only of a particular sect, the custom of which might have been attributed to the whole nation of the Persians, but without sufficient foundation. This is confirmed by the ancient tradition mentioned by Agathius (l. 11), who says, that Ninus killed his own mother Semiramis, because she had proposed to him an unnatural connection with her. For this same reason, according to the author just quoted, Artaxerxes is said to have discarded from him with great indignation his mother Parysatis, although he did not decline the marriage with his two daughters.—(See Hyde, p. 421.)—A. T.