to "Rome in the purest periods of her history."
In the same paragraph (p. 4) the Puritan says, "The Egyptians, Persians, Macedonians, and Athenians allowed the marriage of own sisters, and would not, of course, scruple such alliances." Let this be compared with what Puffendorf has written on the page noted above: "The Athenians, by the constitution of Solon, might marry their sisters by the father's side, and not by the mother's." From the oration of Andocides against Alcibiades, he quotes these words: "Reflect," says he, "with what bravery and what wisdom they proceeded, when they sent so great a man as Cimon into banishment for violating the laws in taking his own sister to bed."
Others of the ancients declared an absolute dislike of this freedom. It is one of Phocylides's precepts,
"Nor climb thy sister's interdicted bed."
And indeed that these matches were very unusual through all Greece, may be gathered from Hermione's speech in Euripides, where she thus upbraids Andromache:
