Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/54

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IN OLD IRÂN.
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character and intrigues of Parysatis, the mother of Artaxerxes, that a slanderous story of the nature described by Ctesias might have been set afloat in the king's harem to gratify the rancour and most wicked vengeance of the queen-mother against the children of Statira, the innocent victim of her revenge for the murder of her own daughter Amistris, the wife of Terituchmes and sister of Artaxerxes. It is also not improbable that Ctesias' narrative of the marriage of Atossa with her father owed its origin to the vindictive Parysatis alone, and was adopted by a writer who preferred to relate astounding inventions instead of sober truths. Oriental history is not unfamiliar with the malignant accusations of the crime of incest by step-mothers or even by mothers-in-law against their daughters or daughters-in-law. It might, therefore, be inferred that if the Greek writer did not invent any fiction as to the domestic life of the Persian ruler, there was another and a more powerful cause which would have given rise to such an abominable story and established it as

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