Penelŏpé
（
Πηνελόπη and
Πενελόπη).
A princess of Greece, daughter of Icarius, brother of Tyndarus, king of Sparta, and of
Polycasté or Periboea. She became the wife of
Odysseus (q.v.), monarch of Ithaca, and her marriage was celebrated about the same
time with that of Menelaüs and Helen. Penel
 |
|
Penelopé. ( Ant. Denkm. i. 3, p. 17.)
|
opé became by Odysseus the mother of Telemachus, and was obliged soon
after to part with her husband, whom the Greeks compelled to go to the Trojan War. Twenty
years passed away, and Odysseus did not return to his home. Meanwhile his palace at Ithaca was
crowded with numerous and importunate suitors, aspiring to the hand of the queen. Her
relatives also urged her to abandon all thoughts of the probability of her husband's return,
and not to disregard, as she had, the solicitations of the rival aspirants to her favour.
Penelopé, however, exerted every resource which her ingenuity could suggest to
protract the period of her decision: among others she declared that she would make choice of
one of them as soon as she should have completed a web that she was weaving (intended as a
funeral ornament for the aged Laertes); but she baffled their expectations by undoing at night
what she had accomplished during the day. This artifice has given rise to the proverb of
“Penelopé's web,” or “to unweave the web of
Penelopé” (
Penelopes telam retexere), applied to whatever
labour appears to be endless. For three years this artifice succeeded, but on the beginning of
a fourth a disclosure was made by one of her female attendants; and the faithful and unhappy
Penelopé, constrained at length by the renewed importunities of her persecutors,
agreed, at their instigation, to bestow her hand on him who should shoot an arrow from the bow
of Odysseus through a given number of axe-eyes placed in succession. An individual disguised
as a beggar was the successful archer. This was no other than Odysseus, who had just returned
to Ithaca. The hero then directed his shafts at the suitors, and slew them all. The character
of Penelopé has been variously represented, some writers saying that she was
unfaithful to Odysseus with all the suitors, and that from this intercourse was born Pan; but
it is the more general version that she is to be considered as a model of conjugal and
domestic virtue.
