Epig. lxxxiii. 3, seq. Pope Alexander VI. and the Emperor Shah Jehan have, in modern times, been accused of similar crimes. Bayle, Dict. Hist. et Crit. Art. Alexandre VI. and Bernier, Voyages, t. i. On the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, see Sepulveda, de Ritu Nupt. et Dispens. i. § 20, where he says, that the Pope could authorize all unions, save those between parents and children. “Et ideo hodiè non ligant, nisi quatenus ab ecclesia sunt assumptæ; ac propterea Papa dispensare potest cum omnibus personis, nisi cum matre et patre, ut matrimonium contrahant.” Card. Cajetan. ap. Sepulved. ub. sup. ----- Could we credit the sophist of Naucratis, there was likewise one distinguished person[16] among the Athenians who coveted the reputation of equal guilt. ----- Footnote 16: Alcibiades. Athen. xii. 48. xiii. 34. Lysias, fr. p. 640. ----- The marriage of brothers with their own sisters was, in later ages, considered illegal; not so with respect to half sisters by the fathers’s side, whom no law forbade men to marry.[17] Still the recorded examples of those who availed themselves of this privilege are few; but among them we find the great Cimon, son of Miltiades, who, from affection, observes Cornelius Nepos, and in perfect conformity with the manners of his country, took to wife his sister Elpinice.[18] Plutarch, too, speaks of the union as public and legal, but Athenæus[19] characteristically insinuates that Elpinice was merely her brother’s mistress. The Spartan law took a different view of what constitutes sisterhood. Here the father was everything, and therefore with an uterine sister, as no near relation, marriage might be contracted.[20] All connexions in the direct line of ascent or descent were prohibited; but the prohibition extended not to the collateral branches,[21] uncles being permitted to take to wife their nieces, and nephews their aunts. ----- Footnote 17: Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 1353. Footnote 18: Corn. Nep. Vit. Cim. i. Plut. Cim. § 4, where we find this lady accused of an amour with the painter Polygnotos, who introduced her portrait among the Trojan ladies in the Stoa Pœcile. Footnote 19: Deipnosophist. xiii. 56. Muretus, Var. Lect. vii. i. discusses the question, but without throwing much new light upon it.—Andocides cont. Alcibiad. § 9, assigns Cimon’s amour with Elpinice as the cause of his banishment. We find, however, Archeptolis, son of Themistocles, marrying his half-sister Mnesiptolema. Plut. Themistocl. § 32. Footnote 20: Meurs. Themis Attica. i. 14. Philo. De Leg. Spec. ii. Eurip. Orest. 545. sqq. Footnote 21: Cf. Herod. v. 39. Pausan. iii. 3, 9. -----