Odyssey 2.50 · Book 2, lines 50–54
The suitors, and the law they dodge
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μητέρι μοι μνηστῆρες ἐπέχραον οὐκ ἐθελούσῃ, τῶν ἀνδρῶν φίλοι υἷες, οἳ ἐνθάδε γʼ εἰσὶν ἄριστοι, οἳ πατρὸς μὲν ἐς οἶκον ἀπερρίγασι νέεσθαι Ἰκαρίου, ὥς κʼ αὐτὸς ἐεδνώσαιτο θύγατρα, δοίη δʼ ᾧ κʼ ἐθέλοι καί οἱ κεχαρισμένος ἔλθοι·
Suitors beset my mother against her will—the dear sons of those men who here are the noblest, who shrink from going to the house of her father Icarius, so that he himself might set the bride-price for his daughter, and give her to whichever man he wished and who came pleasing to him.
Word by word
The setting
The second, greater evil: the suitors. They press an unwilling Penelope; they are sons of Ithaca's leading families; and they refuse the proper course — to court her through her father Icarius, who would fix the bride-gifts and bestow her himself.
A note on this passage
Now the second evil gets a name and a shape: the suitors, sons of the best houses on Ithaca, laying siege to a mother who does not want them. Telemachus adds the legal point — they will not do it the right way, by going to her father Icarius, who would set the bride-gifts and give her himself.
The undercurrent is that the grievance is procedural, not only emotional. Marriage had a correct machinery: the father's house, the ἕδνα (bride-price), a sanctioned choice of husband. By camping in Odysseus's hall instead of approaching Icarius, the suitors dodge that machinery — and shift the whole cost of their courtship onto Telemachus's estate rather than their own. Their offense is against custom as much as against a family.
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