Odyssey 2.196 · Book 2, lines 196–199
They will make the match
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οἱ δὲ γάμον τεύξουσι καὶ ἀρτυνέουσιν ἔεδνα πολλὰ μάλʼ, ὅσσα ἔοικε φίλης ἐπὶ παιδὸς ἕπεσθαι. οὐ γὰρ πρὶν παύσεσθαι ὀίομαι υἷας Ἀχαιῶν μνηστύος ἀργαλέης, ἐπεὶ οὔ τινα δείδιμεν ἔμπης,
And they will arrange a marriage and prepare bride-gifts, very many, such as should go with a beloved daughter. For I do not think the sons of the Achaeans will sooner cease their grievous wooing, since we fear no one anyway,
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The setting
Still speaking, Eurymachus lays out what follows once Penelope is home: her kinsmen will arrange the wedding with rich bride-gifts. And he insists the suitors will never quit their courtship on their own.
A note on this passage
Once she is back under her father's roof, Eurymachus says, her kin will manage the wedding and heap up bride-gifts — the lavish exchange proper to marrying off a cherished daughter. Then the flat refusal: the suitors will not stop their harsh wooing, because they fear no one.
The economics show through the courtesy. The ἔεδνα, the bride-gifts, are the machinery that turns Penelope from a grieving wife into a prize to be transferred between households. And ‘we fear no one’ is the suitors' defining overconfidence — the poem has already promised, in Zeus's own mouth and in the eagle-omen just given, that this fearlessness is exactly what will destroy them.
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