Page:Next-of-kin Marriages in Old Iran.djvu/55

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NEXT-OF-KIN MARRIAGES.

sober truth in the mind of the original biographer of Artaxerxes.

Besides this, a few European scholars seem to point to another such instance in the history of Artaxerxes Mnemon. They discover in Ctesias that Terituchmes, the brother-in-law of the king, and husband of Amestris, was married to his sister Roxana. However, with all deference to their scholarship, I may be permitted to draw attention to the original words of the Greek writer, wherein, as far as I am able to comprehend, the notion of marriage is by no means involved. According to a passage occurring in the English translation of Plutarch's Lives, by Langhorne (III., p. 451), Ctesias relates:—"Terituchmes, the brother of Statira (the wife of king Artaxerxes II.), who had been guilty of the complicated crimes of adultery, incest, and murder, ......married Hamestris, one of the daughters of Darius, and sister to Arsaces; by reason of which marriage he had interest enough, on his father's demise, to get himself appointed to his Government. But in the

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