[134] Οὐδὲ τοκεῦσι Θρέπτρα φίλοις ἀπέδωκε (Il. iv. 477): θρέπτρα or θρεπτήρια (compare Il. ix. 454; Odyss. ii. 134; Hesiod, Opp. Di. 186).
[135] Aristot. Polit. ii. 5, 11. The ἔδνα, or present given by the suitor to the father, as an inducement to grant his daughter in marriage, are spoken of as very valuable,—ἀπερείσια ἔδνα (Il. xi. 244; xvi. 178; xxii. 472): to grant a daughter without ἔδνα was a high compliment to the intended son-in-law (Il. ix. 141: compare xiii. 366). Among the ancient Germans of Tacitus, the husband gave presents, not to his wife’s father, but to herself (Tacit. Germ. c. 18): the customs of the early Jews were in this respect completely Homeric; see the case of Shechem and Dinah (Genesis, xxxiv. 12) and others, etc.; also Mr. Catlin’s Letters on the North American Indians, vol. i. Lett. 26, p. 213.
The Greek ἔδνα correspond exactly to the mundium of the Lombard and Alemannic laws, which is thus explained by Mr. Price (Notes on the Laws of King Ethelbert, in the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England, translated and published by Mr. Thorpe, vol. i. p. 20): “The Longobardic law is the most copious of all the barbaric codes in its provisions respecting marriage, and particularly so on the subject of the Mund. From that law it appears that the Mundium was a sum paid over to the family of the bride, for transferring the tutelage which they possessed over her to the family of the husband: ‘Si quis pro muliere liberâ aut puellâ mundium dederit et ei tradita fuerit ad uxorem,’ etc. (ed. Rotharis, c. 183.) In the same sense in which the term occurs in these dooms, it is also to be met with in the Alemannic law: it was also common in Denmark and in Sweden, where the bride was called a mund-bought or a mund-given woman.”
According to the 77th Law of King Ethelbert (p. 23), this mund was often paid in cattle: the Saxon daughters were πάρθενοι ἀλφεσίβοιαι (Iliad, xviii. 593).
[136] Odyss. i. 430: Iliad, ix. 450: see also Terpstra, Antiquitas Homerica, capp. 17 and 18.
Polygamy appears to be ascribed to Priam, but to no one else (Iliad, xxi. 88).
[137] Odyss. xiv. 202-215: compare Iliad, xi. 102. The primitive German law of succession divided the paternal inheritance among the sons of a deceased father, under the implied obligation to maintain and portion out their sisters (Eichhorn, Deutsches Privat-Recht. sect. 330).
[138] Iliad, ii. 362.—
Ἀφρήτωρ, ἀθέμιστος, ἀνέστιός ἐστιν ἐκεῖνος,
Ὃς πολέμου ἔραται, etc. (Il. ix. 63.)