From Brideprice To Dowry in Mediterranean Europe

In ancient times the Greco-Roman world, in its adherence to a system of dotal marriage, distinguished itself from the barbarians who hovered on its borders and who gave bridewealth for their wives, not dowry to their daughters. Aristotle-perhaps recalling Homeric accounts of marriages like that of Hector, who married Andromache out of the house of Edtion &dquo;when he provided great bridewealth [hedna]&dquo; (Iliad, XXII:472)’-claimed that the Greeks had