Penelope

Wife of Odysseus and queen of Ithaca, daughter of Icarius the Spartan and the naiad Periboea (Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 3.10.6). For the twenty years of her husband's absence she held off a hall full of suitors by promising to choose one when she had finished weaving a shroud for old Laertes — and unwove by night what she had woven by day, until a maid betrayed the trick after three years (Homer *Odyssey* 2.93–110, 19.137–156). Her testing of the disguised Odysseus by the secret of their olive-rooted bed (*Od.* 23.173–230) is the climax of the recognition scenes that close the poem.

Associated Places