Penelope and the Suitors

Author: Homer

Time Period: 999 BCE–1 BCE

Country or Culture: Greek

Genre: Myth

Overview

The story of Penelope and the suitors is one of the many popular episodes in Homer’s epic tale The Odyssey (ca. 725 BCE). Chronologically, The Odyssey begins at the end of the Trojan War, which, as recounted in Homer’s Iliad (ca. 750 BCE), lasted ten years and was finally won by the Greeks through Odysseus’s cunning trick of the famous Trojan horse. Spanning an additional ten-year journey, The Odyssey describes Odysseus’s drawn-out and eventful homecoming. The first four books of The Odyssey, often referred to collectively as the Telemachy, relate the unfortunate state of Ithaca, Odysseus’s kingdom, in his absence. While Odysseus is away, his palace has been occupied by a reported 108 suitors for his wife, Penelope, who while vying for her hand in marriage have been perverting the valued Greek custom of hospitality and plundering the inheritance of Odysseus’s son, Telemachus.

From the sixth book onward, The Odyssey is divided between Odysseus’s return and his revenge. His return plot begins on the island of Ogygia, where Odysseus, having lost all of his men, has been held captive by the goddess Calypso (Kalypsô) for seven years. Taking pity on him, the gods agree to let Odysseus journey home; however, Poseidon, who was not consulted and hates Odysseus, sees him escaping the island and causes a storm, leading him to lose his ship and wash up on the shores of the Phaeacians. Odysseus is welcomed by the Phaeacians, who treat him with great hospitality; after telling them the sensational story of his journey home—including the famous episodes with the Cyclopes, the Sirens, and Circe—they offer to help him return to Ithaca. Having been restored to Ithaca by the Phaeacians, Odysseus plots his revenge. Assisted by Athena, Odysseus is disguised as a beggar so that he will be able to enter his palace undetected by the suitors, whom he eventually massacres.

While Odysseus is famous for his wily maneuvers and clever machinations, critics have often noted that Penelope, more than merely the devoted wife of the Greek hero, is his intellectual match. In her efforts to keep the unruly suitors at bay, Penelope devises a clever plan of her own in which she tells the suitors that she will not consider their offers until she has woven a robe for Odysseus’s father, Laertes. Each day she weaves, and each night she unravels most of the work that she has performed, prolonging the completion of her project. Her plan holds off the suitors for years until her act is discovered and she is betrayed by one of her maidservants. Feeling fairly certain that Odysseus will never return and knowing that she can no longer delay the suitors, Penelope presents them with the challenge of stringing a bow and shooting an arrow through twelve axes, a feat that only Odysseus has been able to accomplish. She is kind yet cautious, challenging characters with tests in order to ensure that she can trust them.

The suitors are presented as a group of entitled, rowdy, and troublesome men. Perhaps the most arrogant of the suitors, Antinous, leads a campaign, assisted by the manipulative Eurymachus, to have Telemachus killed. While the suitors inhabit the palace, they not only squander Telemachus’s birthright but also are downright mean and violent. Their complete disregard for the Greek custom of hospitality is repeatedly shown both to heighten their despicable ingratitude and to justify the gory massacre that awaits them at the end of the epic poem.

Summary

As a subplot in Homer’s Odyssey, the story of Penelope and the suitors comes at the end of Odysseus’s epic journey, when Odysseus, after a ten-year journey from Troy, finally returns to Ithaca. The goddess Athena disguises Odysseus as an unidentifiable stranger so that he will be better able to discover those who have betrayed him in his absence. Returning home from Sparta, Telemachus encounters Odysseus, disguised as a wandering beggar, who eventually reveals himself to be Telemachus’s father. After briefly reuniting, they resolve that the suitors, who have been inhabiting the palace while vying for Penelope’s hand in marriage, must be killed. Deciding that it would be best to launch a surprise attack from within the castle, Odysseus reassumes his disguise as a beggar and enters the castle, and Telemachus returns to the castle in order to hide the palace’s weapons from the suitors.

Odysseus finds himself in the palace among the suitors and the maidservants, who all treat him with little courtesy. Inspired by Athena, Penelope appears before the suitors, who shower presents upon her. Meanwhile, a brawl nearly breaks out between Odysseus and a suitor who throws a chair at him, but Telemachus diffuses the situation and the suitors retire for the night. Following Odysseus’s instructions, Telemachus uses the opportunity to hide the palace’s weaponry. Left alone in the hall, Odysseus is insulted by the maidservants as they tidy up the dinner mess. One of the maidservants, Melantho, is particularly ruthless as she insults him, and Odysseus scolds her for belittling the unfortunate, ironically warning her of the potential of her own impending misfortune.

Overhearing Odysseus’s exchange with Melantho, Penelope chases her off and asks to have a conversation with the beggar by the fire. Asking of the beggar in the traditional way, Penelope questions who he is, where he is from, and who is parents are, but with cunning, Odysseus evades having to answer the question directly and merely informs her that his history is too sad to share. Penelope responds by sharing her own sorrows, telling the stranger of how her husband has been gone for twenty years and, in the meantime, she has had to fend off the interests of brash suitors who obnoxiously overstayed their welcome in the palace. Initially, she had warded off the suitors by telling them that they must wait until she had woven a robe for her father-in-law, Laertes.

After sharing her own story, Penelope probes the beggar once again for his history, and Odysseus is prompted to fabricate a narrative. He reluctantly tells Penelope that his name is Aethon, son of King Decalion and the younger brother of Prince Idomeneus, and that he is from the island of Crete. Being the younger brother, he did not go to Troy to fight the war, but his brother did; before the war began Odysseus stopped at Crete on his way to Troy, where Aethon took him in until the winds calmed down and it was safe to set sail again. While he tells this story to Penelope, she weeps at the name of her husband, and Odysseus is filled with sorrow seeing his wife this way. Wanting to be sure that the beggar’s story is indeed true, Penelope tests him by asking him to describe the nature of Odysseus’s raiment that he wore when he visited Crete. The beggar tells Penelope exactly what he had been wearing in great detail, including tokens that she is sure to recognize, and after he finishes, Penelope commences her weeping, knowing that the beggar is speaking the truth.

“Stranger, all excellence of mine, both of beauty and of form, the immortals destroyed on the day when the Argives embarked for Ilios [Troy], with them went my husband, Odysseus. If he might but come, and watch over this life of mine, greater would be my fame and fairer. But now I am in sorrow, so many woes has some god brought upon me. For all the princes who hold sway over the islands—Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus—and those who dwell around in clear-seen Ithaca itself, all these woo me against my will, and lay waste my house.”

In his beggar disguise, Odysseus tells Penelope the comforting news that he has heard from Pheidon, king of the Thesprotians, that Odysseus is nearby and will be making his return with many treasures soon. He tells her truthfully about the loss of Odysseus’s men and Odysseus’s rescue by the Phaeacians. He assures her that King Pheidon is a trustworthy source since Odysseus had in fact stopped at his palace and left him some treasure. Penelope tells him that she wishes to believe what he says, but she feels that her heart is too weak to be that optimistic. She offers him a luxurious bed, cloaks, and a footbath, all of which the beggar humbly declines, except for the footbath, which he says he will only accept from a truehearted old lady.

Impressed by the beggar’s humility, Penelope summons Eurycleia, an old servant who had taken care of Odysseus as a young boy, to wash his feet. As she approaches, Odysseus remembers the large scar on his leg, stemming from being gashed by a boar during a family hunting expedition that he went on as a boy. He shrouds himself in as much darkness as he can so that Eurycleia might not notice the scar, but as soon as she feels it with her hands, she knows that the beggar is Odysseus in disguise. She tries to make eye contact with Penelope in order to tell her what she has realized, but the goddess Athena distracts the latter to help Odysseus hide his identity from her. Odysseus grabs Eurycleia by the throat and threatens her, making her promise not to betray him. She assures him that she has never betrayed him and never would and that she will assist him in extricating all of the traitors from his household. Odysseus assures her that he will need no help with that.

Eurycleia leaves to refill the water basin, and Penelope turns to the beggar, asking him to interpret a dream that she had. In her dream, there were twenty geese in the house eating wheat when an eagle descended upon them and killed them all. During the onslaught, Penelope watched and wailed, but the eagle assured her in a human voice not to worry and that her dream would be fulfilled. The beggar tells her that the dream is clearly a prophetic vision of Odysseus’s return home, that the geese are the suitors and Odysseus is the eagle. Penelope wistfully brushes off the beggar’s good news once again and tells him that she has set forth a challenge for the suitors on the following morn, in which they are required to string a bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axes, the winner taking Penelope as their prize. The beggar persists that Odysseus will be there the next day to attempt the challenge himself. With sadness, Penelope leaves the beggar and retires for the night.

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