SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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speak at length and discover their relationship. She marries the prince and they sail to
Ephesus where Apollonius discovers his wife, miraculously alive. Apollonius takes his
place on the throne of Cyrene and begets a son.
Like the tale of Constance, this story involves a tale within a tale. The incest of
Antiochus and his daughter is shocking, and their story ends in a suitably startling
manner, but the story continues. Archibald points out that there is a third model of
father-daughter relations—that of Archestrates and his daughter, Apollonius’s wife.
Antiochus was a “bad father and a bad king; Archestrates is a good father and a good
king. How will Apollonius measure up?” (94). Archibald suggests that his long sojourn
demonstrates his virtue. When he loses his wife, he “abandons his role as king” (ibid.)
and leaves his daughter behind as well. He has thus removed himself from the potential
temptation of his daughter as Antiochus did not. When Apollonius has reunited with his
wife and fathered a son, it may be seen as “a welcome return to the normal patriarchal
procedure of the exchange of women; the king marries his heiress daughter to a suitable
prince, who becomes king in his turn. The triumph of patriarchy in this story by the birth
of a son and heir . . . solves the . . . incest problem” (Archibald 95). Their true identities
become known, Apollonius regains his wife and, having proven his virtue, is able to
regain his kingship.
The father-daughter pairs in the Tale of Apollonius demonstrate two models of
self-governance, and by extenuation two models of kingship. Tyrannical Antiochus
brings fear and destruction, discord and division, to his family and his kingdom.
Apollonius, on the other hand, exhibits self-governance that leads to peace and happiness