Wife of Odysseus, who held off more than a hundred suitors for twenty years while he was away at Troy and on his long voyage home, becoming an ancient byword for marital fidelity and cunning.
With Odysseus gone for ten years at Troy and another ten on the voyage home, Penelope's household on Ithaca filled with suitors demanding she remarry and eating through the family's estate while they waited for her answer. Her most famous stratagem, told in the Odyssey, was to promise an answer once she finished weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's father Laertes, then secretly unravel each night's work, stalling the suitors for three years before a disloyal servant exposed the trick.
Matching Wits
The Odyssey treats Penelope as Odysseus's match in cleverness as much as in loyalty. When a stranger (Odysseus in disguise) arrives at the palace, she tests him with questions about her husband before revealing anything of her own suspicions, and even after his identity is confirmed she tests him once more, describing their marriage bed as movable when in fact Odysseus built it around a living olive tree, a detail only the real Odysseus could correct.
The Contest of the Bow
Under pressure to finally choose a husband, Penelope sets a contest: whoever can string Odysseus's great bow and shoot an arrow through a line of axe heads will have her hand. None of the suitors can even bend the bow. The beggar at the feast, secretly Odysseus, strings it easily, and the contest becomes the opening move in his slaughter of the suitors.
Parentage
Mortal parent: Icarius of Sparta
Wholly mortal parentage; some later sources make her mother a naiad, but this is not the mainstream tradition.
Key Deeds
•Delayed the suitors for years by secretly unweaving a burial shroud each night
•Managed the Ithacan household alone for twenty years
•Tested the disguised Odysseus's identity before accepting him
•Set the contest of the bow that led to the suitors' deaths
•Was reunited with Odysseus after twenty years apart
Fate
Reunited with Odysseus after twenty years, restored as queen of Ithaca; the Odyssey closes on their reunion rather than recording a later fate.
Primary Sources
Historical texts and references
“By day she wove the great web, and by night, when she had torches set beside her, she unraveled it.”
