Incest
Greek myth (and perhaps even more so Roman, if we read Ovid) was full of intra-familial unions. This deserves comment, as the incest taboo is one of the most fundamental in just about any society. Even before the genetic problems of such intercourse became common knowledge, children of incest appear to have been considered in some way transgressive. This seems to have been one of the areas by which myth demonstrated, by means of negative exempla, the norms of human behaviour.
One group looked at father/daughter incest, and the myth of Thyestes and Pelopia. In some sources, Thyestes raped his daughter, unaware of who she was. In others, he received an oracle that he could avenge himself on his brother Atreus if he got a son (Aegisthus) on her, and another (in Hyginus) suggests she consented to this out of a sense of duty. Even so, the story ends with her killing herself when her son’s parentage is discovered, suggesting that not even the will of the gods can override the shame of such an act.
The second group looked at mother/son unions, and the myth of Oedipus is the obvious paradigm for this. Do we believe in Freud’s Oedipus complex? And why is there so much more ancient literature on this myth than other tales of incest? Have we sanctified and valorised the mother-son bond as a result of Western Catholicism? There are interesting parallels in the primordial myths, not only of Greece, but also of other cultures – mother/son intercourse tends to be the preserve of the early gods – Oedipus seems in that respect to transgress into the divine sphere.
The last group examined brother/sister incest, with the myth of the Aeolids. The Odyssey suggests the children of Aeolus were all happily married to each other; later versions highlight Macareus and Canace’s illicit affair, Aeolus’ wrath, and her suicide. What is allowable in the world of the ‘apologoi’ is less so in other genres. But again, cf. Zeus and Hera, a model picked up by the Ptolemies in Hellenistic Egypt. Mortals should not emulate the gods – where they do so, however unwittingly, it leads to death and the subversion, rather than continuation, of the oikos.
Tags: gender, Greek gods, Greek literature, Greek myth, incest, mythological theory, Oedipus, taboo, teaching
