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[146] φίλην, his own; 1.167. ἀνάεδνον: no doubt a wrong form for “ἀν-έεδνον” (Bentley), prob. by confusion with * “ἄ-εδνος”, from the simple “ϝέδνα”. In 13.366 there is some slight MS. authority for “ἀνέεδνον”. — There is no doubt that the original and dominant meaning of the word “ἔδνα” or “ἔεδνα” in H. is bride-price, a sum paid by the suitor to the parents of the bride; for, as Aristotle says of the primitive Greeks, “τὰς γυναῖκας ἐωνοῦντο παρ᾽ ἀλλήλων” ( Pol. ii. 5). (See 11.243, 13.366, 381, 16.178, 18.593, 22.472, Od. 8.318.) This custom, almost universal in an early state of society when women are no longer seized by force, gave way in time to the dowry given by her parents to the bride. There was an intermediate stage, well attested for the Germans by Tacitus ( Germ. 18), in which the “ἕδνα” are given to the bride by the husband, and may be increased by gifts from her parents: dotem non uxor marito, sed uxori maritus offert. Intersunt parentes et propinqui, ac munera probant ... In haec munera uxor accipitur, atque in vicem ipsa armorum aliquid viro adfert. It seems that this is the stage indicated in the present passage (cf. also Od. 6.159). Agamemnon may of course mean ‘instead of selling my daughter to him I will pay him to take her’; but the use of μείλια looks as though it were a technical term implying presents regularly given by the bride's father, as by Altes when marrying Laothoe to Priam, 22.51 — a practice inconsistent, of course, with purchase pure and simple. In modern language Agamemnon says, ‘he need not settle anything on my daughter (“ἀνάεδνον”), and I will give a greater dowry than was ever known.’ In one or two late passages of the Od. (Od. 1.278, Od. 2.197) the final stage, in which the “ἕδνα” are a dowry given by her parents to the bride, has been reached. (See an excellent discussion of the whole question in Cauer Grundfr. 187-97, and for a narrower view Cobet M. C. 239 ff.) The word μείλια does not recur before Ap. Rhod. and Kallimachos, who use it in the general sense of presents. Ar. read “ἐπιμείλια” on the analogy of “ἐπιφέρνια”, but “ἐπέδωκε” in 148 is decisively in favour of taking “ἐπιδώσω” together, ‘I will give in with her.’

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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