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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.
I. Classical Testimony on the Subject.

Without presuming to attack any particular European theory, I beg to put forward my humble impressions in confirmation of the first statement. Among the Western classical writers, who are concerned with Persian history or religion, there are about fifteen who have touched upon the subject of next-of-kin marriages in old Irân, and who belong to different periods, from the 7th century B. C. to the 6th century A. D. They are Xanthus (I. about B. C. 650); Herodotus (B. C. 484–409); Ctesias (1. about B. C. 440); Strabo (B. C. 54 to A. D. 24); Plutarch (b. A. D. 66); Curtius (b. A. D. 70); Tertullian (A. D. 160–240); Origen, Clemens Alexandrinus, Diogenes Laertius and

    which the world has yet seen. Nay, he may provisionally accept the opinion that nowhere else are such traces of intelligent religious earnestness to be found as existing at the period of the Gâthâs or before them, save in the Semitie Scriptures." Elsewhere he also remarks: "Nowhere, at their period, had there been a human voice, so far as we have any evidence, which uttered thoughts like these. They are now, some of them, the great common places of philosophical religion; but till then they were unheard (agushtâ)."

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