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No, not to save all earth, were earth in peril!Our race hath always dwelt apart from thineFrom the beginning, and shall do so ever. (1.3.388-95).Although Japhet is speaking to Samiasa, Aholibamah not only answers, but answersin the first person plural, assuming the right of speaking collectively for herself andher sister. This is then explicitly made part of a tribal concept which representsexogamy as being worse than the extinction of the tribe. Interestingly, one of the finalcomments in Cain also addresses intermarriage: Cain laments, over the body of hismurdered brother,he who lieth there was childless! IHave dried the fountain of a gentle race,Which might have graced his recent marriage couch,And might have temper’d this stern blood of mine,Uniting with our children Abel’s offspring! (C 3.1.556-60).Aholibamah’s honoured forefather holds rather a different view than she onintermarriage between his children and those of his sibling, and yet on much the sameissues: he wishes that he could have reduced the force of his own blood. Heaven andEarth turns away from Cain’s display of virtue. Further underlining the divisionbetween the Cainites and the Sethites, Japhet denounces Aholibamah as having “Toomuch of the forefather whom thou vauntest” in her (1.3.399). However, when Japhetsuggests that Anah is more like Abel than like her ancestor Cain, Aholibamahinterrupts him, exclaiming,And would’st thou have her like our father’s foeIn mind, in soul? If I partook thy thought,And dreamed that aught of Abel was in her! –Get thee hence, son of Noah; thou mak’st strife. (1.3.408-11).The threat implied by the aposiopesis declares Aholibamah’s exclusive tribalidentification very emphatically. She is not alone in holding such strong views, as is341