Penelope

Mortal queen of Ithaca, daughter of Icarius of Sparta; wife of Odysseus and mother of Telemachus. The archetype of the faithful wife: through the twenty years of Odysseus absence she kept off the suitors with the trick of the never-finished shroud and at last recognized her returned husband by the secret of their olive-rooted marriage-bed. Named throughout the prose of greek_odysseus as his spouse and the mother of his son.

Children

• Telemachus

Domains

• marital fidelity and domestic cunning

Powers

• Hold off the suitors with the unfinished shroud
• Test and recognize her returned husband by the secret of the marriage-bed

Epithets

• περίφρων Πηνελόπεια

Relations

• spouse: Odysseus
• mother of: Telemachus

Sources

• Homer, Odyssey passim (esp. 1, 2, 19, 23)
• Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.10.6, Epitome 7.38-39
• Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993), pp. 711-712