In Troy, Helen apparently becomes the wife of two brothers in succession. We must not overrate the force of merely negative evidence, but it will be observed that Homer does not furnish us with any trace of this usage among the Greeks. The story of Phœnix probably implies, that the connection of the same woman with a father and a son was incestuous; for the full efficacy of the remedy proposed by his mother turns on the supposition, that there would remain to his father no alternative but incest after Phœnix had gained his object, and that such an alternative would at once deter him from the love of the stranger.
In Scheria, Alcinous is married to Arete, the daughter of his elder brother Rhexenor[928]. Tyro was the wife of Cretheus, and was apparently also his niece[929]. Again, we appear to find in the Iliad an example of a marriage, by one shade yet less desirable, that of a man with his aunt. Tydeus, the father of Diomed, was married to a daughter of Adrastus: and Ægialeia the wife of Diomed, as she is called Ἀδρηστίνη, was probably his aunt likewise[930].
We have also among the Trojans an example of a man’s marriage with his aunt. Iphidamas, son of Antenor[931], was brought up in the house of Cisses his maternal grandfather; and he contracted a marriage with his mother’s sister just before proceeding to the war.
At the same time, the law of incest is clearly a progressive one from the infancy of mankind onwards, and what we have to consider is not so much its precise extent, as the degree of genuine aversion with which the violation of it is regarded. Upon this subject there can be no doubt, when we read the passage in the Eleventh Odyssey respecting the μέγα ἔργον of Œdipus and Epicaste, and the fearful consequences which, though it was done in ignorance, it entailed upon them[932]. In principle, then, that restriction of the field of choice, which adds so greatly to the intimacy and firmness of the marriage tie, was fully recognised in Greece.
Neither do we want traces in Homer of that remarkable effect of the unifying power of marriage, which confers upon each partner in the union an equal and common relation to the family of the other, by a convention which has so much of the moral strength of fact. The most remarkable of all the indications upon this subject in the poems is that, which relates to the future life of Menelaus. He is said to be elected to the honour of a place in the region of Elysium after this life, not in virtue of his own merits, but as being, through his marriage with Helen, the son-in-law of Jupiter.
The recognition of relationships through the wife or husband to the husband or wife respectively, and the existence of names to describe them, is a sign of the completeness of the union effected by the marriage tie. That these terms were not merely formal and ceremonious, we may judge from the speech of Alcinous:
ἦ τίς τοι καὶ πηὸς ἀπέφθιτο Ἰλιόθι πρὸ
ἐσθλὸς ἐὼν, γαμβρὸς ἢ πενθερὸς, οἵτε μάλιστα
κήδιστοι τελέθουσι, μεθ’ αἷμά τε καὶ γένος αὐτῶν[933].