Melantho (daughter of Dolios)
Melantho ( Greek Μελανθώ ) is a figure in Greek mythology .
She is named in the Odyssey as one of the twelve faithless maids of Queen Penelope . Your name may be related to the Greek word μέλας ( mélas) , which means "black".
Melantho is the daughter of Dolios , who works as a gardener at the court of the king of Ithaca, Odysseus , and the sister of the goatherd Melanthios . She has lived at court since childhood and is named as one of Penelope's favorite maids, who treats her as well as if she were her own daughter. When Penelope is harassed by suitors during the long absence of her husband Odysseus, Melantho, who is described as a beautiful girl with a sharp tongue, however - like her brother Melanthios - takes the side of the suitors and becomes Eurymachus' lover .
Penelope still believes in the return of her husband and tries to buy time by weaving a shroud and telling the suitors that she will only choose a new husband after the shroud is finished. What she has woven during the day, however, she secretly dissolves at night. In this way she manages to hold off the suitors for over three years until Melantho reveals to the suitors what their mistress is doing. Then the suitors no longer want to wait for Penelope to marry a recruiter from their ranks.
When Odysseus returns to Ithaca and sleeps unrecognized in the hall of the palace disguised as a beggar, Melantho insults and mocks him - he should spend the night outside and not in a palace where so many noble men are staying.
After Odysseus killed the suitors a few days later with the help of his son Telemachus , the cowherd Philoetios and the swineherd Eumaius , Melantho was punished too: she and the eleven other faithless maids had to carry the corpses of the suitors outside the palace and the Clean the hall in which Odysseus took bloody revenge on the suitors. Then she is hung up together with the eleven others by Telemachus, Philoetios and Eumaios in the courtyard of the palace.
In the 1968 film L'Odisseia ( The Odyssey ) by Franco Rossi , the role of Melantho was played by Andrea Šarić.
literature
- Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher: Melantho 2) . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.2, Leipzig 1897, column 2583 ( digitized version ).
- Odette Touchefeu-Meynier: Melantho . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume VI, Zurich / Munich 1992, p. 412.
Web links
- Melantho in the Greek Myth Index (English)