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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Penelope Biography PENELOPE, pe-nel’o-pe (Lat., from Gk. IIηνελόπη, Pēnelopē, IIηνελόπειa, Pēnelopeia). In Greek legend, a daughter of Icarios of Sparta and Peribœa and wife of Odysseus. According to the Homeric story Odysseus was soon called to the Trojan War, leaving his wife with their infant son Telemachus at Ithaca. When Troy had fallen and years passed without his return, numerous suitors gathered at his palace, whom the youthful Telemachus could not dispossess, though they devoured and wasted his father's goods, while importuning Penelope to choose one of them as her husband. For some time she put them off under the plea that she must first finish the shroud she was weaving for old Laertes, father of Odysseus. To protract the time, she raveled out at night what she wove by day. Betrayed by a maid, she was compelled to finish the work, and the suitors were preparing to force a decision, when Odysseus returned and slew them. Later epics told how Odysseus was subsequently slain in ignorance by Telegonus, his son by Circe, and how after his death Telemachus, Telegonus, and Penelope journeyed to Circe's island, where Telemachus wedded Circe, and Telegonus Penelope. There is considerable evidence connecting both Odysseus and Penelope with Arcadia, as local divinities. At Mantinea the grave of Penelope was shown, and in Arcadian legends she is a nymph, who became by Hermes (or in another version by all the suitors) the mother of Pan. The later writers endeavored to account for her grave by saying that when Odysseus learned of her infidelity he dismissed her, whereupon she wandered to Lacedæmon and then to Mantinea, where she died. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVIII. (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 284-285. |