The position of Penelope is very unstable and legally perplexing. Has her father her marriage? has her son her marriage? is she not perhaps still a married woman with a living husband? Telemachus would give much to have her off his hands, but he refuses to send her to her father's house, where the old man might be ready enough to return the bride-price to her new husband, and get rid of her with honour. For if Telemachus sends his mother away against her will he will have to pay a heavy fine to her father, and to thole his mother's curse, and lose his character among men (odyssey, II. 130-138). The Icelanders of the saga period gave dowries with their daughters. But when Njal wanted Hildigunna for his foster-son, Hauskuld, he offered to give [Greek: hedna]. "I will lay down as much money as will seem fitting to thy niece and thyself," he says to Flosi, "if thou wilt think of making this match." [Footnote: Story of _Burnt Njal_, ii. p. 81.]
Circumstances alter cases, and we must be hard pressed to discover signs of change of manners in the Odyssey as compared with the _Iliad_ if we have to rely on a solitary mention of "men of many lots" in Crete, and on the perplexed proposals for the second marriage of Penelope. [Footnote: For the alleged "alteration of old customs" see Cauer, _Grundfragen der Homerkritik_, pp. 193-194.] We must not be told that the many other supposed signs of change, Iris, Olympus, and the rest, have "cumulative weight." If we have disposed of each individual supposed note of change in beliefs and manners in its turn, then these proofs have, in each case, no individual weight and, cumulatively, are not more ponderous than a feather.
The great strength of the theory that the poems are the work of several ages is the existence in them of various strata of languages, earlier and later.
Not to speak of differences of vocabulary, Mr. Monro and Mr. Leaf, with many scholars, detect two strata of earlier and later _grammar_ in Iliad and Odyssey. In the _Iliad_ four or five Books are infected by "the later grammar," while the Odyssey in general seems to be contaminated. Mr. Leafs words are: "When we regard the Epos in large masses, we see that we can roughly arrange the inconsistent elements towards one end or the other of a line of development both linguistic and historical. The main division, that of _Iliad_ and Odyssey, shows a distinct advance along this line; and the distinction is still more marked if we group with the _Odyssey_ four Books of the _Iliad_ whose Odyssean physiognomy is well marked. Taking as our main guide the dissection of the plot as shown in its episodes, we find that marks of lateness, though nowhere entirely absent, group themselves most numerously in the later additions ..." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. ii. p. X.] We are here concerned with _linguistic_ examples of "lateness." The "four Books whose Odyssean physiognomy" and language seem "well marked," are IX., X., XXIII., XXIV. Here Mr. Leaf, Mr. Monro, and many authorities are agreed. But to these four Odyssean Books of the _Iliad_ Mr. Leaf adds _Iliad_, XI. 664-772: "probably a later addition," says Mr. Monro. "It is notably Odyssean in character," says Mr. Leaf; and the author "is ignorant of the geography of the Western Peloponnesus. No doubt the author was an Asiatic Greek." [Footnote: _Iliad_, vol. i. pp. 465-466. Note on Book XI. 756.] The value of this discovery is elsewhere discussed (see _The Interpolations of Nestor_).