will they know who are fathers and daughters, and so on? They will never know. The way will be this:—dating from the day of the hymeneal, the bridegroom who was then married will call all the male children who are born in the seventh and tenth month afterwards his sons, and the female children his daughters, and they will call him father, and he will call their children his grandchildren, and they will call the elder generation grandfathers and grandmothers. All who were begotten at the time when their fathers and mothers came together will be called their brothers and sisters, and these, as I was saying, will be forbidden to inter-marry. This, however, is not to be understood as an absolute prohibition of the marriage of brothers and sisters; if the lot favours them, and they receive the sanction of the Pythian oracle, the law will allow them. Quite right, he replied. Such is the scheme, Glaucon, according to which the guardians of our State are to have their wives and families in common. And now you would have the argument show that this community is consistent with the rest of our polity, and also that nothing can be better—would you not? Yes, certainly. Shall we try to find a common basis by asking of ourselves what ought to be the chief aim of the legislator in making laws and in the organization of a State,—what is the greatest good, and what is the greatest evil, and then consider whether our previous description has the stamp of the good or of the evil? By all means. Can there be any greater evil than discord and distraction

Socrates: as their actual kinsmen—as brothers and sisters, if of a suitable age; as parents and grandparents, if more advanced in age; and as...

Legislators, moreover, do not allow those who are unmarried to discharge the highest magisterial offices. For instance, the legislator of the...

The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from...

O nobly-born, at this time thou wilt see visions of males and females in union. When thou seest them, remember to withhold thyself from going between...

Since pleasure and lust seem to fall under marriage, it must also be treated of. Marriage is the first conjunction of man and woman for the...

If Plato himself and the Pythagoreans, as indeed later also followers of Marcion, regard birth as something evil (though the last named was far from...

And so the consummation of this mystery, so sweet and requisite, is wrought in secret; lest, owing to the vulgar jests of ignorance, the deity of eith...

And God tolerates their as one Body and its Members, and must aim (in the Fear of God) at the Getting of Children; or else the Wantonness [or Lust] in...

Thou wilt take thee a wife of the house of my father, and the Most High God will bless thee, and thy children will be a righteous generation and a hol...

Do not conceive that the Son in the Father is so mixed that his Person can neither be seen nor known: No; for if it were so then it were but one...

" Do not take thee a wife of any of the daughters of Canaan ; arise and go to Mesopotamia, to the house of Bethuel, thy mother's father, and take...

In ancient times the law directed washing after the emission of the generative seed because it was foretelling our regeneration by speaking of...

No [one can] know when [a husband] and wife have sex except those two, for marriage in this world is a mystery for those married. If defiled marriage...

Marriage plays such a large part in human affairs that it must necessarily be taken into account in treating of the religious life and be regarded in...

And ye suffer him no more to do aught for his father or his mother; making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delive...

There the so-called three great houses gathered, and there they drank their drinks, there they also ate their food, which was the price of their...

Accordingly the apostle rightly says, "It is better to marry:than to burn," that the husband may give to the wife her due he wife to the husband, and...

Let us briefly follow the history. Plato ranks marriage among outward good things, providing for the perpetuity of our race, and handing down as a...

Therefore shall man and wife be one, and therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be one flesh.

And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them ...