Rights in the Family
Appendix 1. (1131).
According to Xenophon (Memor., 4: 4, §22), Socrates appeals to the difference in age when he reproves marriages [between spouses of vastly different age] for infertility and perniciousness. It would seem that he saw no other intrinsic reason for excluding them. Nevertheless he says that they are `forbidden by a law given to mankind BY THE GODS.' Plato also seems to allude to an unwritten law in book 8 of the Laws where he reasons to great effect about the intimate opposition between parental and sexual love. According to him, this law comes from ancient traditions and forbids such unions, which he calls Jeomish, that is, `things detested by God'. Note in reference to such places that: 1. the Greeks often hint at a very ancient, traditional law, in harmony however with nature and even written in the human heart, as Plato explicitly mentions here; 2. the fact that no other intrinsic reason could be found for rejecting such unions, according to Xenophon, shows that the son of Sophroniscus also considered human beings more from the spiritual than the animal aspect. Plato could, therefore, have taken from him his tendency to dictate such strange laws about marriage for his Republic. Nevertheless, anyone reading bk. 8 of Plato's Laws will see how the great man mentally embraced the whole complex of human nature. He was quite aware of the moral and jural rules needed to refrain sensuality.
Finally, we should note that impediments in the direct and transversal lines are considered obligatory by Scripture not only for the Hebrews but also for all the peoples. This is clear from Leviticus 18 where we find the following preface to these impediments: `You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes.' The writer immediately adds to the prohibition of marriages between relatives a veto on other indecent things. He considers them together and concludes: `Do not defile yourselves by any of these things, for by all these the nations I am casting out before you defiled themselves; and the land became defiled, so that I punished its iniquity, and the land vomited out its inhabitants.' He goes on: `But you shall keep my statutes and ordinances, and do none of these abominations. - (for all these abominations the men of the land did, who were before you, so that the land became defiled); lest the land vomit you out, when you defile it, as it vomited out the nation that was before you.' These words certainly and clearly show that rational law forbade marriage amongst relatives, but they indicate equally clearly the probability of a divine, positive law which determined the limits within which such unions could be made, according to circumstances. Hence, the Hebrew teachers place the law about impediments amongst the precepts given to Adam by God (cf. Selden, De jur. nat., bk. 5, c. 11); Grotius also, after quoting several places from the Gentiles concludes: `These all show the knowledge the ancients had of the divine law against such marriages; we see that the word WICKED was used to describe them' (De jure B. et P., bk. 2, c. 5, §13; 7).