Read Homer’s Daughter for Free Online

privileges except the title of wife?
    A Sican councillor named Antiphus then observed that my sister-in-law, Ctimene, had brought a dowry with her, and so had my mother. Might it not be more consistent and generous, he asked, if the King extended this custom to the case under discussion?
    My father replied that he found neither inconsistency nor lack of generosity in his proposal. Marriage customs change, he said, and not so very long ago a man was unable to dispose of his daughter at all; this being the prerogative of her maternal uncle—a prerogative still insisted upon by the Sicans of the Aegadean Islands. Dowries were inconvenient relics of this outmoded system, and had no place in our patriarchal economy. No, no, any young man of good family who aspired to marry me, rather than the daughter of a poorer and less influential house, would find it advantageous both to disburse considerable treasure for that purpose and to treat me with the utmost respect when I became his wife.
    â€œWould my lord the King enlarge on these advantages?” asked tall, sneering Prince Antinous. “Nausicaa is not an heiress in her own right; besides, she has four brothers, among at least three of whom you will, I daresay, divide your property?”
    â€œI refuse to commit myself on that head,” cried my father, stamping his foot. “The advantages of marrying Princess Nausicaa, though indirect, are likely to be solid.”
    Eupeithes, Antinous’s father, brought the debate to a close by suggesting that when I was a year older, a span taller, andof a more rounded figure, the beauty which I already promised would doubtless bring me suitors by the score, each competing with the others in the bestowal of rich gifts. Until then, discussion of my future seemed to him somewhat premature.
    My father was angered by the mixed reception of his announcement, and I felt like a skinny fish, brought to market, for which nobody cares to bid. The cry goes up: “Throw it back into the sea and let it grow fatter!” Some of my girl friends teased me cruelly the next day. One asked me to name my marriage price; if it was a reasonable one, she said, her parents might well be persuaded to buy me as a wife for their cowman. I could see that my mother regretted that the question had ever been aired in public, though she was too loyal to admit this. At all events, she undertook that I should be consulted before a husband was finally chosen for me and have the right to refuse any candidate if I could justify my dislike of the match. Meanwhile she would weave me a bridal robe of sea purple, which I might embroider with needlework pictures in gold and crimson as a proof that I was my father’s obedient daughter. She duly provided the robe, and I busied myself very unbusily on the pictures; and for every three that I completed, I would secretly unpick at least one when nobody was looking.
    Drepanum presently learned what my father had meant by “indirect advantages”. When Eurymachus came forward at the end of the year and asked permission to court me, he was awarded the vacant junior priesthood of Poseidon, which carried rich perquisites, and promised, at our marriage, the monopoly of a sea ferry between the islands. Antinous,Mulius, and Ctesippus, three other suitors who then entered the field, were given or promised similar favours. None of them professed to be in love with me, and all seemed a little afraid of my tart tongue, which I did not spare them when out of my father’s hearing. I certainly had no liking, or even respect, for any of the four.
    â€œIt is, however, better not to feel too passionately attached to your husband,” my mother told me. “A husband should never know exactly where he stands with his wife, though hopefully relying on her faithfulness to the marriage bed; I realized, for instance, when your father bought Eurymedusa of Apeira, that he must be under a strong temptation to make her his