“My father is abroad and we do not know whether he is alive or dead. It will be hard on me if I have to pay Icarius the large sum which I must give him if I insist on sending his daughter back to him.”
~ The Odyssey - Book II (Samuel Butler Translation. p189)
Telemachus calls for an assembly and addresses all the suitors. He scolds them for consuming all their resources in the guise of pursuing courtship. Everyone is astonished at his boldness. Antinous blames Penelope saying that she is tricking them by unweaving the weaving that she does in the morning. Telemachus prepares to go to Pylos and Sparta to ask about his father. Minerva helps him get a boat and people. He leaves without telling anyone except an old nurse who was in charge of all the supplies.
In Book 2 of The Odyssey, one of the suitors, Antinous, asks Telemachus to send his mother back to her home so that her father can marry her off to someone. Telemachus says, “It will be hard on me if I have to pay Icarius the large sum which I must give him if I insist on sending his daughter back to him.” It was surprising to see that the practice of giving dowry, i.e., giving a sum of money to the groom to get one’s daughter married, existed so many years ago, that too, in Greece!