Penelope

Pronunciation

Alternate Names

Ancient commentators have noted that, in some sources, Penelope’s original name was Ameirace (Greek Ἀμειράκη, translit. Ameirákē), Arnacia (Greek Ἀρνακία, translit. Arnakía)^[3], or Arnaea (Greek Ἀρναῖα, translit. Arnaîa).^[4]

Titles and Epithets

Penelope had several epithets, especially in Homer’s Odyssey. The most important of these emphasized her virtue and cunning, including ἀμύμων (amýmōn, “blameless”), πινυτή (pinytḗ, “prudent”), περίφρων (períphrōn, “wise, sage”), and ἐχέφρων (echéphrōn, “sensible, discreet”).

Family Tree

Origins

There are only scattered references to Penelope’s early life. In one tradition, known only from commentators writing in late antiquity, the infant Penelope was thrown into the sea by either her own parents or by Nauplius, a neighboring king. She was saved, however, by ducks, which in Greek are called pēnelopes. Because of this, she was renamed Penelope.^[23]

Marriage to Odysseus

When Penelope was of marriageable age, many suitors came to seek her hand. Her father Icarius challenged the men to a footrace and promised his daughter to the winner, who turned out to be Odysseus.^[24] In other traditions, however, Odysseus was awarded Penelope as a bride after he helped her uncle Tyndareus safely arrange the marriage of his own daughter, Helen, to Menelaus.^[25]

After the wedding, Odysseus brought Penelope to his modest island kingdom of Ithaca. Soon they had a son named Telemachus. But their happiness was short-lived. Back in Sparta, Penelope’s cousin Helen had left her husband Menelaus for the Trojan prince Paris. Menelaus assembled an army of all the greatest kings and heroes of Greece, and Odysseus was forced to join.

Penelope in the Odyssey

At the beginning of Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus has been absent from Ithaca for twenty years. Ten of those years were spent fighting the Trojan War—the trick of the Trojan Horse, which led to a Greek victory, was his idea—but nobody had heard from him since. Indeed, Odysseus’ return journey had been fraught with peril and setbacks: he spent ten years wandering the seas, losing all of his ships and men in the process.

Meanwhile, back in Ithaca, Odysseus was presumed dead. In the seventeenth year of his absence, the young men of Odysseus’ kingdom—108 of them in total, according to Homer^[26]—flocked to his palace to seek Penelope’s hand in marriage. Though Penelope was by now much older than they were, she was still beautiful—and, of course, whoever married her would become king of Ithaca.

Though under immense pressure to remarry—even her father and brothers wanted her to do so^[27]—Penelope was determined to remain faithful to Odysseus. She also wished to protect the inheritance of her son Telemachus, who was just entering adulthood.

The suitors did not make things easy on Penelope. They moved into her palace, ate her food, and tormented her servants. At one point, they even tried to murder Telemachus.^[28] In public, Penelope remained steadfast in her resolve, regularly meeting with the suitors but never agreeing to marry; privately, she would mourn, fast, pray, and weep. At some points, she even wished for death:

Would that pure Artemis would even now give so soft a death, that I might no more waste my life away with sorrow at heart, longing for the manifold excellence of my dear husband, for that he was pre-eminent among the Achaeans.^[29]

As the suitors grew increasingly persistent, Penelope devised crafty ways to delay them. First, she claimed that she could not remarry until she had woven a burial shroud for her father-in-law Laertes. She spent her days weaving, only to unravel all of her work at night while the suitors slept. This worked for a while, but eventually Penelope was betrayed by Melantho, one of her handmaids and a lover of the suitor Eurymachus.^[30]

After being away for twenty years, Odysseus finally returned to Ithaca, three years into the suitors’ bid to win his wife. He first came to the palace disguised as a beggar, having learned from Athena that the place was crawling with suitors and that it would be dangerous for him to show himself.

Odysseus revealed his identity to his son Telemachus and a few trusted servants, but not to Penelope. He did, however, speak to her privately one night. During their conversation, Penelope told the disguised Odysseus that she planned to give the suitors one final test: she would marry whoever could string Odysseus’ old bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe rings.^[31]

With this information, Odysseus and Telemachus began plotting. They stole the suitors’ weapons and arranged for them to be locked in the main hall. When Penelope announced the test of the bow, none of the suitors could accomplish the task. Only Odysseus—still disguised as a lowly beggar—was able to string the bow and shoot an arrow through the axe rings. With his true identity revealed, Odysseus and Telemachus proceeded to slaughter all the suitors.^[32]

After the massacre, Odysseus revealed himself to Penelope. But Penelope was cautious; she had not seen Odysseus in twenty years and wanted to make sure that this man was really her husband. So she came up with a clever test: she told her servants to bring Odysseus’ bed outside to the main hall so that he could sleep there. When Odysseus told her that this was impossible, as he had built the bed out of a living olive tree (a fact that only the real Odysseus could have known), Penelope knew it was really him.^[33]

Other Myths

In what survives of ancient Greek and Roman literature, there are only scattered references to what happened to Penelope after the events of the Odyssey. In what appears to have been a well-known tradition, Odysseus had no sooner returned to Ithaca than he was forced to leave again on another odyssey, this time to do penance for blinding Poseidon’s son Polyphemus.

Once again, Odysseus was absent from Ithaca for many years, though he eventually returned. Meanwhile, Odysseus’ son Telegonus—whom Odysseus had conceived with the sorceress Circe while making his way home from Troy—had come to Ithaca to find his father. Unfortunately, when they finally met, the father and son did not recognize each other, and Telegonus killed Odysseus.

When Telegonus discovered his mistake, he buried Odysseus and mourned his death. He then took Penelope and Telemachus with him to his mother’s island of Aeaea. There, Telemachus married Circe, while Telegonus married Penelope. Soon after, Penelope and Telegonus had a son named Italus, from whom Italy derived its name.^[34]

Other Versions: Unfaithful Penelope

In some alternatives to the familiar Homeric account, Penelope was not faithful to Odysseus while he was away. There were different versions of what exactly she did, as well as her ultimate fate.

In some versions, Penelope slept with either Apollo, Hermes, or all of the suitors who came to court her in Odysseus’ absence. From this union, she gave birth to Pan, a half-goat woodland deity. In other versions, Penelope only slept with one of the suitors.^[35]

When Odysseus came home and discovered that Penelope had been unfaithful, he either banished her,^[36] killed her,^[37] or left Ithaca to continue his wanderings.^[38]