ABSTRACT
One of the more striking features of genealogical material derived from fifth-and fourth-
century Attic sources is the frequency of marriage between extremely close kin.
Nevertheless, no society that has produced so terrible a drama as Oidipos Tyrannos could
be considered as having had an entirely complacent attitude towards the question of
incest. Indeed, one of Aristotle’s criticisms of Plato’s proposals for a community of
property, children, and wives was that the consequent opacity of kinship relations would
result in the possibility of the crimes of assault, homicide, feuds, and slander being
committed against the members of one’s own family, for:
All these are unholy if they are committed against father or mother or near
relatives as if they were not relatives.
