Penelope

Penelope set up a great loom in her halls and began weaving a large shroud from fine thread. Suitors from Dulichium, Same, Zacynthus, and Ithaca were pressing her to marry, though she remained unwilling. They consumed Odysseus’ herds at their feasts and wasted his estate. She told them that she could not choose a husband until the shroud was complete.

The shroud was for Laërtes, the aged father of Odysseus, to be used when death finally took him. Penelope said that she did not want the warrior who had gained many possessions to lie without a burial cloth, or the Achaean women to blame her. The suitors accepted this reason and agreed to wait until the work was finished.

By day, Penelope wove at the great loom. By night, she unravelled the same work by torchlight. In this way she delayed the marriage and kept the suitors from learning what she was doing. She maintained the trick for three years as the seasons passed. During this time, she continued to long for Odysseus and to suffer under the pressure of the suitors.

When the fourth year came, one of her handmaids, who knew the secret, told the suitors. They caught Penelope unraveling the splendid weaving and discovered the deception. After that, they became more demanding and difficult to control. Penelope was then forced to finish the shroud. The suitors continued to press her, while Odysseus remained absent and the fate of his household was unresolved.

Telegonus plundered cattle on Ithaca after a storm drove his ship onto the island. He did not know where he had landed. Odysseus came out to defend the herd, and the two men fought. Telegonus carried a spear made by Hephaestus. Its point held the venom of a poisonous stingray. He struck Odysseus, and the poison killed him.

As Odysseus lay dying, the two men recognised one another. Telegonus had learnt from Circe that Odysseus was his father. He lamented the mistake and understood that he had killed his own father. He carried Odysseus’ body to Aeaea, the island where Circe lived, taking Penelope and Telemachus with him. There they buried Odysseus.

The story followed Odysseus’ later travels after the burial of Penelope’s suitors. He sacrificed to the Nymphs, visited Elis, and received a bowl from Polyxenos. He then travelled to Thesprotia, where he made the sacrifices advised by Tiresias. Queen Callidice offered him the throne. She bore him a son, Polypoites, and Odysseus ruled there until her death. He returned to Ithaca after giving the throne to Polypoites, and found that Penelope had borne him another son, Poliporthes.

Telegonus’ killing of Odysseus partly fulfilled Tiresias’ prophecy in Odyssey 11 that death would come from the sea, through the stingray’s poison. It also differed from the prophecy of a gentle death in old age. On Aeaea, Circe made Telegonus, Penelope, and Telemachus immortal. Telegonus married Penelope, and Telemachus married Circe. A later account sends Telegonus and Penelope to the Isles of the Blessed, but that departure is otherwise unattested.

Penelope slept with the suitors during Odysseus's absence. She became pregnant and gave birth to Pan. This tradition does not assign the child to one suitor. Pan was described as the collective son of the men who had been pursuing Penelope, with his parentage belonging to all of them together.

The birth brought shame and anger upon Odysseus. The story says that it caused him to leave home again in disgust. It gives no further account of Penelope's fate or of Pan's childhood. Pan was especially associated with the wild country of Arcadia, where his cult originated, but this version does not state that his birth took place there.

This was one of several traditions about Pan's birth. Other accounts made Hermes his father by different mothers. Pan was also linked with Arcadia, and another tradition connected Penelope with Mantineia in Arcadia. In that account, she was sent away by Odysseus after being seduced by Antinoos, and gave birth to Pan as a son of Hermes. The tradition of Pan as the son of the suitors therefore differs from accounts that give him one divine father or one named human father.

Icarius had an infant daughter who was exposed to danger at the sea. One account says that she was thrown into the water. The account does not preserve the name of the person who exposed or threw her there. At this point she had not yet received the name Penelope.

Ducks found the child and rescued her. They saved her from the sea, and she survived. The rescue brought the infant back from the danger into which she had been placed. The ducks are the sole rescuers named in this account.

After the rescue, the child’s parents recovered her. They took her back and gave her the name Penelope. Her father was Icarius. The name Penelope is elsewhere said to seem to come from a Greek word meaning “duck”. This supplies a possible connection between her name and the creatures that saved her, but the rescue account simply states that her parents named her after they recovered her.

The episode ends with the child alive and returned to her parents. It explains how Icarius’s daughter came to be called Penelope. Other accounts describe Penelope in later episodes, including her marriage to Odysseus and the events after his absence, but those events belong to different parts of her story.