Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/49

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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.

There is another Achæmenian monarch who is alluded to by Plutarch, on the authority of Ctesias and his followers, as having married his sister. According to Langhorn's translation of Plutarch's Life of Artaxerxes II., the Greek biographer relates:—"Artaxerxes in some measure atoned for the causes of sorrow he gave the Greeks, by doing one thing that afforded them great pleasure: he put Tissaphernes, their most implacable enemy, to death. This he did, partly at the instigation of Parysatis who added other charges to those alleged against him......From this time Parysatis made it a rule to please the king in all her measures, and not to oppose any of his inclinations, by which she gained an absolute ascendant over him. She perceived that he had a strong passion for one of his own daughters named Atossa. He endeavoured, indeed, to conceal it on his mother's account and restrained it in public. Parysatis no sooner suspected the intrigue, than she caressed her grand-daughter more than ever, and was continually praising, to Artaxerxes, both her beauty

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