Homeric Ἔδνα and Penelope's Κύριος

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Abstract
One of the features of the Homeric poems which has often excited comment is the marriage system, both in its apparent difference from that prevailing in classical Athens and for its own inconsistencies as they appear on the surface. Dr M. I. Finley in a paper to which my debt will be evident throughout this discussion, despite my disagreement with some of his arguments, has shown that the old theories of ‘Bride-Purchase’ will not really hold water, and that at a Homeric marriage the bride was part of an exchange of gifts or services between the prospective bride-groom and the bride's father, and that these gifts were called ἕδνα.What this paper attempts to do is to suggest that (1) there were in fact two different patterns of marriage in Homeric, as in classical times; (2) that ἕδνα belonged essentially to only one of these patterns; (3) that ἕδνα were not δῶρα, although they had many of the facets of gifts, most particularly in that they expressed the giver's quality, and this in turn carried the assumption that to be outdone in ἕδνα, as in gifts, would incur a slur on a man's rank and quality as an ἀγαθός, and this would lead to criticism and ἐλεγχείη; and (4) (in a second part) that, if the analysis of ἕδνα attempted in the first part of this paper is acceptable, the apparent confusions and contradictions in the arrangements proposed for Penelope's second marriage disappear.