Incest taboos aren't universal. And, well, modern western people vastly, vastly overstate the dangers of close relative inbreeding. Like there's basically no genetic risk to having kids with a first cousin unless both of you are carrying a gene for a genetic illness.
It just wasn't a big deal to some societies. In other societies, though, it was a really big deal, like with Oedipus. Depending on how inheritance works marrying fairly close relatives can be a strategy to keep property like land intact in the family instead of constantly subdividing it among descendants.
without doing a lot of research to come up with a more complete reply, I'll say that the individual Greek city states often had very different taboos and norms, and they changed a lot over time, and if I remember correctly (I haven't read Oedipus in a long time) the issue wasn't incest, specifically, but rather that he committed patricide and then cucked his dad or something? And however folks felt about incest I'm pretty sure Patricide was about as bad a crime as you could commit, up there with desecration of a sacred site, treason against your city, or murdering a guest.
But, again, I'm just going on old memories, so take this all with plenty of salt.
Actually they are. What precisely counts as incest varies, and there have always been people who violate it (like any taboo), but this is one of those things we can truly say exists in every documented human culture.
The real thing is that gods and supernatural beings were not generally considered moral paragons; they were usually more like powerful, capricious spirits. The shit they did was very often framed as fucked up. Alternatively, it was framed as not applicable to human morality, because they are so fundamentally different.
Incest taboos aren't universal. And, well, modern western people vastly, vastly overstate the dangers of close relative inbreeding. Like there's basically no genetic risk to having kids with a first cousin unless both of you are carrying a gene for a genetic illness.
It just wasn't a big deal to some societies. In other societies, though, it was a really big deal, like with Oedipus. Depending on how inheritance works marrying fairly close relatives can be a strategy to keep property like land intact in the family instead of constantly subdividing it among descendants.
But Oedipus is from the same society as the mythology full of incest.
without doing a lot of research to come up with a more complete reply, I'll say that the individual Greek city states often had very different taboos and norms, and they changed a lot over time, and if I remember correctly (I haven't read Oedipus in a long time) the issue wasn't incest, specifically, but rather that he committed patricide and then cucked his dad or something? And however folks felt about incest I'm pretty sure Patricide was about as bad a crime as you could commit, up there with desecration of a sacred site, treason against your city, or murdering a guest.
But, again, I'm just going on old memories, so take this all with plenty of salt.
Actually they are. What precisely counts as incest varies, and there have always been people who violate it (like any taboo), but this is one of those things we can truly say exists in every documented human culture.
The real thing is that gods and supernatural beings were not generally considered moral paragons; they were usually more like powerful, capricious spirits. The shit they did was very often framed as fucked up. Alternatively, it was framed as not applicable to human morality, because they are so fundamentally different.