Penelope

For other uses, see Penelope (disambiguation).

Penelope
Penelope by Leonidas Drosis, National Glyptotheque of Greece
In-universe information
Title	Queen of Ithaca
Family	Icarius (father) Periboea or Asterodea (mother) Alyzeus (brother/half-brother) Leucadius (brother/half-brother) Thoas (brother) Damasippus (brother) Imeusimus (brother) Aletes (brother) Perileos (brother) Iphthime (sister/half-sister)
Spouses	Odysseus Telegonus
Significant others	Apollo (lover) Hermes (lover)
Children	Telemachus Poliporthes Arcesilaus Italus Mamilia Pan (alternative versions)
Relatives	Perseus (great-grandfather) Andromeda (great-grandmother) Tyndareus (paternal uncle) Leda (paternal aunt) Castor (paternal cousin) Pollux (paternal cousin) Clytemnestra (paternal cousin) Helen (paternal cousin)
Home	Lacedaemon
Nationality	Greek

Penelope. Drawing after Attic pottery figure.

Penelope encounters the returned Odysseus posing as a beggar. From a mural in the Macellum of Pompeii

Penelope (/pəˈnɛləpi/ pə-NEL-ə-pee; Ancient Greek: Πηνελόπεια, Pēnelópeia, or Πηνελόπη, Pēnelópē) is a legendary mythological Greek Queen of Ithaca and Princess of Sparta or Acarnania, who plays a prominent character in Homer's Odyssey. She is the daughter of Spartan King Icarius and Naiad Periboea and mother to Ithacan Princes Telemachus, Poliporthes, Arcesilaus, Oenotrian King Italus, Princess Mamilia, and the God Pan.

The mythological Penelope is known for her fidelity to her husband Odysseus, despite the attention of more than a hundred suitors during his absence, alongside her great intelligence in weaving a multitude of schemes to keep her suitors at bay. In one source, Penelope's original name was Ameirake, Arnakia or Arnaia. She considered a "standout" in both beauty and wits compared to others in her day, and so virtuous it was said that she surpassed even her cousin Helen in the beauty of her virtue.

Etymology

Glossed by Hesychius as "some kind of bird" (today arbitrarily identified with the Eurasian wigeon, to which Linnaeus gave the binomial Anas penelope), where -elōps (-έλωψ) is a common Pre-Greek suffix for predatory animals; however, the semantic relation between the proper name and the gloss is not clear. In folk etymology, Pēnelopē (Πηνελόπη) is usually understood to combine the Greek word pēnē (πήνη), "weft", and ōps (ὤψ), "face", which is considered the most appropriate for a cunning weaver whose motivation is hard to decipher. Robert S. P. Beekes believed the name to be Pre-Greek and related to pēnelops (πηνέλοψ) or pēnelōps (πηνέλωψ). Olga Levaniouk argued that the pēnelops were not wigeons, but rather a kind of seabird not too dissimilar to the Halcyon.

Genealogy

Mythic tradition explicitly makes clear Penelope's ancestry. According to the Odyssey, Penelope is the daughter of Laconian Icarius, King of Lacedaemon or Acarnania. Little else is mentioned about Penelope's familial background in the Homeric epics. However, Pseudo-Apollodorus has her be the daughter of the Naiad nymph Periboea (who is said to have had 5 other sons with Icarius, but notably not Iphthime from the Odyssey). Strabo in his Geography, makes Penelope's mother to be Polycaste, the daughter of Lygaeus. Aside from the above mentioned, the Scholia to the Odyssey gives the names of a Asterodea and Dorodoche.

By virtue of her paternal grandmother Queen Gorgophone, Penelope is the great-granddaughter of Hero Perseus and Andromeda of Aethiopia, making her a Perseid and a scion of the King of the Gods, Zeus. Though typically there is consensus upon Penelope descending from Gorgophone, a more obscure tradition has her paternal grandmother be Naiad nymph Batia making her the daughter of a Naiad and the granddaughter of a Naiad, with respect to the tradition of Periboea as her mother. As a Princess of Lacedaemon and the granddaughter of Spartan King Oebalus or Perieres, Penelope is a direct descendant of the first King of her native Laconia, Lelex and a member of the royal family. Through this lineage, she is a descendant of: the Lapiths (through Queen Diomede), Olympian God Apollo, Naiad Stilbe, Charites Cleta, Pleiad Taygete, Oceanids Pleione and Eurynome, Titans Oceanus and Tethys, Poseidon or Titan Helios. Zeus is her ancestor four times over (father of King Lacedaemon, father of Goddess Cleta, father of Olympian Apollo, father of King Perseus).

Hyacinthus, son of King Amyclas and lover of Apollo, is her paternal great-uncle.

Mythology

Before the Trojan War

Pēnelopes and Plunge into the Sea

A myriad of myths derived from Pseudo-Apollodorus, Pausanias, Strabo and varying other ancient sources paint a picture of Penelope's life prior to the advent of the Trojan War. Of them the chronological earliest accounts of her life intend to explain her famous name and how she acquired it. There are at least two separate myths that chronicle her being plunged into the seas only to be rescued pēnelopes - as attested by Byzantine Scholar Eustathius of Thessalonica alongside various scholia. In the first, Penelope as a child is cast into the sea by her parents and rescued by the pēnelopes birds. Once recovered, she is taken back by her parents, whose strange actions are given no reasoning or justification.

It is said that she was first called Arnaia and was thrown into the sea by her parents, and then carried to shore by some birds called pēnelopes. And in this way she was recovered by her parents and named Penelope, by the same name as the birds, and when she grew up she had two names for the rest of her life.

Despite the above, the Odyssey portrays Icarius as having given his daughter a dowry with "very numerous" gifts, befitting a beloved child held dear. One that his grandson Telemachus would find difficult to compensate should he wish to return Penelope to her father's house. Telemachus himself goes on to proclaim that Icarius will make him pay a hefty "price" should he attempt to send his mother back to her father's house.

The second version of events transpires when Penelope is a married woman, during the time of the Trojan War at the hands of King Nauplius of Euboea. Nauplius desired retaliation against Odysseus for having conspired to have his son Palamedes killed. At the beginning of the Trojan War, King Menelaus called upon the former suitors of his wife Queen Helen of Troy to keep faith with the Oath they swore, and assist him in retrieving Helen back from Troy, where she had fled with or had been abducted to by Prince Paris. Upon hearing this, Odysseus feigned lunacy to avoid the prospect of war, for his wife Penelope had only recently given birth to his son, and it had been prophesied that should Odysseus depart Ithaca and set sail for Troy, he would not return home for twenty long years and would suffer greatly at seas.

Palamedes had seen through this scheme however, and foiled it. He snatched Penelope and Odysseus' newborn son from her breast, and drew his sword forth as if to kill the infant. Fear for the life of his dear child made Odysseus give up on his act entirely, thereby proving that he was of sound mind and forcing him to keep the Oath of Tyndareus by going to war against Troy with the Achaeans. Though Odysseus was made to make for Troy, he never forgave Palamedes for forcing him into the war, and killed the son of Nauplius years later. It was for this that he sought to kill Penelope by throwing her into the sea. Once again, she is saved by the pēnelopes.

Didymos says that Penelope was first called Amirake/Ameirake or Arnakia, but when Nauplius threw her into the sea to exact vengeance for his son Palamedes, she was saved by pēnelopes, the nominative singular of which is pēnelops, and accordingly she was renamed in this way.

While factors vary between the two, both myths consistently hold that Penelope's name is derived from the pēnelopes and that she holds a special relationship with the birds. Classicist Olga Levaniouk suggests that the myths of Penelope and her pēnelopes show her intrinsic connection to the cyclic sequence of darkness, disappearance, and lament, followed by light, return, and rebirth.

Native Kingdom

Though all mythic tradition accounts for her being a Princess former to her marriage to Odysseus, the kingdom she hails from differs in accordance with tradition. Although she is of Lacedaemon by lineage as the daughter of Icarius, her father's residence and kingdom is in some sources said to be in Lacedaemon and in others Acarnania.

For Pseudo-Apollodorus and Strabo agree in that prior to her birth, Icarius and Tyndareus were banished from their native Sparta by their brother Hippocoön, who took the throne with the might of his many sons on account of being the eldest son of Oebalus. When Batia is said to be the mother of Icarius, the three men are proclaimed to be full-brothers, else Hippocoön was the son of Oebalus by Batia alone, while Icarius and Tyndareus were the sons of Oebalus by Gorgophone, explaining the factionism. The brothers fled to King Thestius, who ruled the Pleuronians, and allied with him, assisting the King in conquering on the farther side of the River Achelous in exchange for a portion of the conquest for themselves.

Tyndareus went on to marry the daughter of Thestius, Leda, and returned to Lacedaemon with her to wear the mantle of its King after his Cousin Heracles had killed Hippocoön and most of his sons, thereby recovering his throne. But here the tradition diverges, for Strabo insists that Icarius did not return with his brother back to Sparta, instead becoming King of the land they had won possession of for themselves in Acarnania. By Polycaste, the daughter of Lygaeus, he had sons Alyzeus and Leucadius, who would go on to rule the kingdom alongside him, and Penelope herself. By this myth, Penelope was a Princess of Acarnania.

Pseudo-Apollodorus however states that both brothers returned back to their homeland together after Heracles and his men killed Hippocoön and his sons, thus reclaiming the Sparta together and allowing for Tyndareus to recover his throne. Pausanias claims otherwise entirely of the previous two myths by proclaiming that Icarius never fled with Tyndareus to begin with, but rather stood by Hippocoön and his supporters against Tyndareus. Here, Tyndareus flees because of fear, and Icarius remains in Sparta. By the claims of Pseudo-Apollodorus and Pausanias, Penelope was a Princess of Lacedaemon.

Role in The Odyssey

Penelope is married to the main character, the King of Ithaca, Odysseus (Ulysses in Roman mythology), and daughter of Icarius of Sparta and Periboea. She has only one son with Odysseus, Telemachus, who was born just before Odysseus was called to fight in the Trojan War. She waits twenty years for Odysseus's return, during which time she devises various cunning strategies to delay marrying any of the 108 suitors (led by Antinous and including Agelaus, Amphinomus, Ctessippus, Demoptolemus, Elatus, Euryades, Eurymachus and Peisander).

Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse (1911-1912)

On Odysseus's return, disguised as an old beggar, he finds that Penelope has remained faithful. She has devised cunning tricks to delay the suitors, one of which is to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly father Laertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished. Every night for three years, she undoes part of the shroud, until Melantho, a slave, discovers her subterfuge and reveals it to the suitors.

Penelope's efforts to delay remarriage is often seen as a symbol of marital fidelity to her husband, Odysseus. But because Athena wants her "to show herself to the wooers, that she might set their hearts a-flutter and win greater honor from her husband and her son than heretofore", Penelope does eventually appear before the suitors.

Irene de Jong wrote:

 As so often, it is Athena who takes the initiative in giving the story a new direction ... Usually the motives of mortal and god coincide, here they do not: Athena wants Penelope to fan the Suitors' desire for her and (thereby) make her more esteemed by her husband and son; Penelope has no real motive ... she simply feels an unprecedented impulse to meet the men she so loathes ... adding that she might take this opportunity to talk to Telemachus (which she will indeed do).

It is important to consider the alternate perspective of Penelope entertaining, and even enjoying the attention of, her suitors. Italian philosophy historian Giula Sissa offers a unique perspective which supports this idea. The Odyssey allows room for Penelope’s identity free of being Odysseus' wife. As she awaits his return, she makes a plan to deal with her suitors while also responding to her desires. Sissa discusses how Penelope gives her suitors the opportunity to demonstrate themselves as the best candidate for her attention. Sissa writes,

Penelope innovates. And she does so because she responds in the same register to the desires of the men who have been awaiting her verdict for three years. This is an erotic desire to which she reacts, first, with seductive wiles of messages and promises, and then by inviting them to demonstrate their excellence, not in terms of wealth and social prestige, but in terms of something extremely personal and physical. In order to please Penelope, they have to be on par with Ulysses in showing the might of their bodies.

Among the four surviving statues of Penelope, this is the oldest dating back to the 5th century BC, crafted 300 years after Homer composed The Odyssey. Discovered in Persepolis and housed at National Museum of Iran, the other three are kept at Vatican Museum and Capitoline Museum in Rome.

She is ambivalent, variously asking Artemis to kill her and apparently considering marrying one of the suitors. When the disguised Odysseus returns, she announces in her long interview with him that whoever can string Odysseus's rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads may have her hand. "For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero".

There is debate as to whether Penelope knows that it is Odysseus. Penelope and the suitors know that Odysseus (were he in fact present) would easily surpass them all in any test of masculine skill, so she may have started the contest as an opportunity for him to reveal his identity. On the other hand, because Odysseus seems to be the only person (except, perhaps, Telemachus) who can actually use the bow, she could just be further delaying her marriage to one of the suitors.

When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors are able to string the bow, except Odysseus who wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors – beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from his cup – with help from Telemachus, Athena and the slaves Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd. Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory (with a little makeover by Athena); yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned – she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene – and tests him by ordering her slave Eurycleia to move the bed in their bridal-chamber. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done, since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope finally accepts that he truly is Odysseus, a moment that highlights their homophrosýnē (ὁμοφροσύνη, "like-mindedness"). Homer implies that from then on Odysseus would live a long and happy life together with Penelope and Telemachus, wisely ruling his kingdom, and enjoying wide respect and much success.

Post-Odyssey Myths

Gold intaglio ring, Syria, last quarter of the 5th century BC (Louvre Museum)

Penelope also appears in the lost Greek epic Telegony that does not survive except in a summary, but that was attributed to Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene and written as a sequel to the Odyssey. According to this epic, Odysseus had a son called Telegonus with Circe when he was on her island. When Telegonus had grown to manhood, Circe sent him in search of Odysseus. Shipwrecked on Ithaca by a storm, Telegonus misidentified the island and, assailed by hunger, began plundering it. Odysseus and his oldest son, Telemachus, defended their city and, in the ensuing melée, Telegonus accidentally killed his father with a lance tipped with the venomous spine of a stingray. After discovering the identity of his father, Telegonus brought Telemachus and Penelope to Circe's island. Here, Athena ordered the marriage of Telemachus to Telegonus's mother, the enchantress Circe, while Telegonus married the new widowed Penelope. After burying Odysseus, Circe made the other three immortal. According to Hyginus, Penelope and Telegonus had a son called Italus who, according to some accounts, gave his name to Italy. This legend inspired Sophocles's lost tragedy Odysseus Acanthoplex.

In some early sources such as Pindar, Pan's parents are Apollo and Penelope. Herodotus, Cicero, Apollodorus, and Hyginus all describe Hermes and Penelope as his parents. Pausanias records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to Odysseus, who banished her to Mantineia upon his return. In the 5th century AD Nonnus names Pan's mother as Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia. Other sources report that Penelope had slept with all 108 suitors in Odysseus's absence, and gave birth to Pan as a result. This myth reflects the folk etymology that equates Pan's name (Πάν) with the Greek word for "all" (πᾶν). The Odyssey carefully suppresses this variant tradition.

Iconography

Drawing of a depiction on an Ancient Greek pottery vessel. Penelope sits before a tapestry on a warp-weighted loom

Penelope is recognizable in Greek and Roman works, from Attic vase-paintings—the Penelope Painter is recognized by his representations of her—to Roman sculptures copying or improvising upon classical Greek models, by her seated pose, by her reflective gesture of leaning her cheek on her hand, and by her protectively crossed legs, reflecting her long chastity in Odysseus's absence, an unusual pose in any other figure.

Latin tradition

Latin references to Penelope revolved around her sexual loyalty to the absent Odysseus. It suited the marital aspect of Roman society representing the tranquility of the worthy family. She is mentioned by various classical authors including Plautus, Propertius, Horace, Ovid, Martial and Statius.

The use of Penelope in Latin texts provided a basis for her ongoing use in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as a representation of a chaste wife. This was reinforced by her being named by Saint Jerome among pagan women famed for their chastity.

References

Primary sources

• Homer, Odyssey
• Ovid, Heroides I
• Lactantius Placidus, Commentarii in Statii Thebaida
• Apollodorus, The Library with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. ISBN 0-674-99135-4. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Greek text available from the same website.
• Gaius Julius Hyginus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.

Secondary sources

• Amory, Anne (1963), ‘The reunion of Odysseus and Penelope’, in Charles H. Taylor (ed.) Essays on the Odyssey: Selected Modern Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, pp. 100–36.
• Clayton, Barbara (2004), A Penelopean Poetics: Reweaving the Feminine in Homer's Odyssey. Lanham, Maryland and Oxford: Lexington Books.
• Cohen, Beth (1995, ed.), The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer's Odyssey. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Doherty, Lillian E. (1995), Siren Songs: Gender, Audiences, and Narrators in the Odyssey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• Felson, Nancy (1994). Regarding Penelope: From Character to Poetics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Finley, M.I. The World of Odysseus, London. Pelican Books (1962).
• Hall, Edith (2008), The Return of Ulysses: A Cultural History of Homer's Odyssey. London and New York: I. B. Tauris.
• Heilbrun, Carolyn G. (1991), ‘What was Penelope unweaving?’, in Heilbrun, Hamlet's Mother and Other Women: Feminist Essays on Literature. London: The Women's Press, pp. 103–11.
• Heitman, Richard (2005), Taking her Seriously: Penelope and the Plot of Homer's Odyssey. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press. ISBN 0-472-11489-1.
• Katz, Marylin Arthur (1991), Penelope's Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• Marquardt, Patricia A. (1985), ‘Penelope “ΠΟΛΥΤΡΟΠΟΣ”’, American Journal of Philology 106, 32-48.
• Nelson, Thomas J. (2021), ‘Intertextual Agōnes in Archaic Greek Epic: Penelope vs. the Catalogue of Women’, Yearbook of Ancient Greek Epic 5, 25–57.
• Reece, Steve, "Penelope's ‘Early Recognition’ of Odysseus from a Neoanalytic and Oral Perspective," College Literature 38.2 (2011) 101-117. Penelopes_Early_Recognition_of_Odysseus
• Roisman, Hanna M. (1987), ‘Penelope's indignation’, Transactions of the American Philological Association 117, 59-68.
• Schein, Seth L. (1996, ed.), Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04440-6
• Wohl, Victoria Josselyn (1993), ‘Standing by the stathmos: the creation of sexual ideology in the Odyssey’, Arethusa 26, 19-50.
• Zeitlin, Froma (1996). 'Figuring fidelity in Homer's Odyssey in Froma Zeitlin, Playing the Other: Gender and Society in Classical Greek Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 19–52.
• Zerba, Michelle (2009), ‘What Penelope knew: doubt and scepticism in the Odyssey’, Classical Quarterly 59, 295-316.

External links

• Odyssey in English on the Perseus Project
• Penelope Unravelling Her Web – a painting of Penelope by Joseph Wright of Derby (from the Getty Museum)
• Penelope and the Suitors, a painting by John William Waterhouse; explore other paintings depicting Penelope