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[677] Medon, the Ithacan herald, was one of the attendants of the suitors ( Od.16. 252) and was in high favour with them (17. 172). But he is here represented as Penelope's informant of her son's danger, and he is spared at the general massacre of the suitors and their accomplices (22. 357). There need be no inconsistency in this, if we think that his intimacy with the suitors was kept up in order that he might be privy to their designs against his master's family. This seems simpler than to regard him as playing fast and loose in order to stand well with both parties.

Homer's Odyssey. W. Walter Merry. James Riddell. D. B. Monro. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1886-1901.

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