xiii. 384, ἐπεὶ οὔ τοι ἐεδνωταὶ κακοί εἰμεν, "we will not make hard

marriage terms," that is, will not demand a heavy bride-price.

In _Od_. i. 278, ii. 196, Telemachus is bidden to take his mother to her father, "they will give the marriage feast and ἀρτυνέουσιν ἔεδνα, many such as should follow with a dear daughter." Mr. Murray says that the writer of these lines "mistook the meaning of estim because he had forgotten the custom" (_R. G. E._ p. 152). But even Aeschylus knew that ἔεδνα were gifts from the bridegroom (_Prometheus_, 559, quoted by Mr. Murray); and if the author of the passages in _Odyssey_, i. ii., did not know, he cannot have read the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. This is so improbable, for even the author of the very "late" song of Ares and Aphrodite (_Od_. viii. 318) knew all about the legal nature of ἔεδνα, that we can hardly suppose the writer of the passages in _Od._ i. ii. to have fancied that ἔεδνα meant "dowry."

One thing is certain, that the prehistoric usage of bride-price almost uniformly prevails in the poems, with a trace of such variations in custom as actually occur, when circumstances or affection demand it, in every stage of human society. The bridal customs are not pedantically stereotyped in Homer, but variations in accordance with circumstances do not prove lateness or earliness, any more than such female names as Alphesiboea, Phereboea, Polyboea, and others, indicating that a daughter, on her marriage, will bring many kine into her family, "express the excuse which the parents made to themselves for venturing to rear the useless female child."[10]

Not even in Australian black society are girls more apt than male babies to be killed as _bouches inutiles_, they are far too valuable to their brothers or maternal uncles, being exchanged for other men's sisters or nieces as brides. The cattle-owning barbaric societies of Africa are not addicted to female infanticide, much less could Homeric society be with its wealth and its tenderness of heart. In Greek non-Homeric legend how often do we hear of a baby-girl being exposed? It is the boys who suffer, in the hope of defeating some prophecy. Homeric society is infinitely remote from that in which girls were too expensive and useless to keep.[11]

Homer is the last author in whom we can hopefully look for survivals of savagery, or of cruel and filthy superstitions. In the Epics there is not a harlot, common as they are in the ancient Hebrew books. It is not to be supposed that the ancient profession was unknown, but all such things are ignored in deference to a taste more pure than that of early Ionian society and of historic Greece from first to last. The tone of taste and morals is, in short, Achaean, like the poet himself;[12] Shakespeare, in _Troilus and Cressida_, makes Patroclus mimic Nestor; he

"coughs and spits, And with a palsy fumbling in his gorget, Shakes in and out the rivet,"

in "a night-alarm." Shakespeare has read of the night-alarm in _Iliad_,