Penelope
mythological figure · 6 works · 25 mentions · 85 anchored passages
Queen Penelope · daughter of Ikarios · his mistress · his wife · the queen · Mother · Penelope, the daughter of Icarius · Wife · his admirable wife · my dear child
in the texts
Odyssey
Wife of Odysseus and mother of Telemachus, besieged by suitors and grieving her husband's long absence.
Then, going upstairs with her handmaids into her room, she mourned her dear husband till Athena shed sweet sleep over her eyes.
Penelope, daughter of Ikarios, heard his song from her room upstairs, and came down by the great staircase, not alone, but attended by two of her handmaids.
I will embolden him to call the Achaeans in assembly, and speak out to the suitors of his mother Penelope, who persist in eating up any number of his sheep and oxen;
Orations
Wife of Odysseus, besieged by suitors during his absence.
And on this account the youth of the Cephallenians turned to the wooing of Penelope and the plundering of his goods.
or else to depart in the same rags from the prudent and good daughter of Icarius, the queen.
but not even Penelope, though she was good and conversed very kindly with him and had learned about her husband — not even she, he says, gave him a cloak as he sat naked beside her, but only promised, if it should appear that he spoke truly about Odysseus,
Stromata
Penelope, quoted from Homeric verse washing herself before prayer.
Penelope comes to her prayer;
And she, having washed herself, having clean garments on her flesh,
Alcibiades 1
Odysseus's wife, named in connection with the suitors who contended with him, cited within the Homeric example of strife over justice.
And from this difference arose the fights and deaths of the Achaeans, and of the Trojans as well, and of the suitors of Penelope in their strife with Odysseus.
Phaedo
The wife of Odysseus in Homeric myth, known for weaving and unweaving her web, invoked as a simile.
No, for the soul of the philosopher would not reason as others do, and would not think it right that philosophy should set it free, and that then when set free it should give itself again into bondage to pleasure and pain and engage in futile toil, like Penelope unweaving the web she wove.
Letters to Lucilius
Wife of Ulysses in the Odyssey, famed for her fidelity
Why do you inquire whether Penelope was chaste, whether she deceived her own age?