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.