Of the impediments to marriage arising, among ancient nations, from relationship or consanguinity, very little is with certainty known. In the heroic ages, all unions excepting those of parents with their children appear to have been lawful; for, in the Odyssey, we find the six sons of Æolos joined in marriage with their six sisters, the manners of the olden times, abandoned on earth, still lingering among the gods. Iphidamos has to wife his mother’s sister,[9] and Alcinoös, by no means a profligate or immoral prince, is united with his brother’s daughter;[10] Deiphobos, after Paris’s death, takes possession of Helen,[11] and Helenos, the seer, is united in wedlock with Andromache, the widow of his brother Hector.[12] But without alleging any further examples, we may, from the practice imputed to the gods, among whom scarcely any degree of relationship was a bar to marriage, infer that, in very early ages, few scruples were entertained upon the subject. Later mythologists have even imputed to Zeus an illicit amour with his daughter Aphrodite,[13] but libellously, and in contradiction to the best ancient authorities.[14] Nature, indeed, has so peremptorily prohibited the union of parents with their own children, that positive laws forbidding connexions so nefarious, have in all ages been nearly unnecessary, though the superstition of the Magi[15] in ancient, and the profligacy of popes and princes in modern times, have been accused of transgressing these natural boundaries. ----- Footnote 9: Hom. Il. λ. 221, seq. Footnote 10: Hom. Odyss. η. 55, seq. Footnote 11: Keightley, Mythology, p. 490. Footnote 12: Serv. ad Virg. Æn. iii. 297. Footnote 13: Virg. Cir. 133. Sed malus ille puer, quem nec sua flectere mater, Iratum potuit, quem nec pater, atque avus idem Jupiter. Footnote 14: For Valckernaer’s correction of Eurip. Hippol. 536, where for ὁ Δίος παῖς, he reads ὄλιγος παῖς, should, I think, be adopted. Diatrib. in Eurip. Perd. Dram. xv. p. 159, c. His whole defence of Zeus on this _count_ is triumphant. Still the notes of Monk, Beck, Musgrave, and the Classical Journal, vi. 80, should be compared. Footnote 15: Diog. Laert. Proœm. § 6. To this practice Euripides probably alludes in the Andromache, v. 173, sqq., where Hermione describes, with scorn, the profligate manners of the barbarians. Catullus, inveighing against the impious depravity of a contemporary, observes— “Nam Magus ex matre et gnato gignatur oportet, Si vera est Persarum _impia religio_.”