Penelope (mythology)

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Statue of Penelope in the Vatican , Rome

Penelope ( Greek  Πηνελόπη , with Homer always Πηνελόπεια ) is the wife of Odysseus and the mother of Telemachus in Greek mythology . Her parents are Ikarios and Periboia (deviating from this, Polycaste , Astrodeia and Dorodoche are also named as mother). Homer mentions her sister Iphthime and brothers, although he does not mention their names.

biography

Penelope, a Spartan princess, became the wife of Odysseus through a competition: The latter won a race that the wedding applicants had to contest. She was the model of a faithful wife. She knew how to put off her numerous suitors , including Antinous and Eurymachos in particular , during her husband's wandering by pretending that she had to weave a kerchief for her father-in-law Laërtes first . But at night she kept tearing open what she had woven during the day. That went well for three years, until the faithless servant Melantho betrayed her and the suitors surprised her with their nocturnal goings-on. So she decided to give the suitors an impossible task: they should shoot through twelve ax rings with Odysseus' bow. None of the suitors could draw a bow. Only Odysseus, who had meanwhile returned and disguised as a beggar by Athene, succeeded in this, whereupon he killed all suitors.

The odyssey ends with the return of Odysseus in the twentieth year of his departure to Troy and the punishment of the suitors and the faithless servants .

According to telegony , Penelope married after the death of Odysseus Telegonus , whom Odysseus had fathered with the sorceress Kirke during his wandering. Penelope received immortality from Kirke. According to a later tradition, Penelope became the mother of Italos through Telegonos .

Interpretation of the name

The name Penelope is possibly composed of the Greek words πήνη ( pēnē : tissue ) and λέπειν ( lépein : tear off, peel off ) or based on πηνέλοψ ( penélops ), a colorful species of ducks .

reception

Alessandro Scarlatti's opera Penelope la Casta premiered in Italy at the end of the 17th century. Gabriel Fauré wrote an opera called Pénélope , which premiered in Monte Carlo in 1913. Rolf Liebermann's Penelope ( Opera semiseria , libretto by Heinrich Strobel, premier at the Salzburg Festival 1954) puts women at the center of the plot. A story that tells the fate of Penelope from a modern point of view and in contrast to the Odyssey is The Penelopiade by Margaret Atwood . Inge Merkel used the material in her 1987 novel entitled A Quite Ordinary Marriage. Odysseus and Penelope .

literature

Web links

Commons : Penelope  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Libraries of Apollodorus , 3, 10, 6
  2. ↑ Alkmaionis and Ephoros in Strabo 10, 452
  3. ↑ Pherecydes in Scholia zu Homer, Odyssey 1,275; 4,797; 15.16
  4. ↑ Pherekydes in Scholien to Homer, Odyssey, 15, 16
  5. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 4,797
  6. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 15:16
  7. ↑ Pausanias 3:12 , 4; 3, 13, 6; 3, 20, 10-11
  8. ↑ The library of Apollodorus , Epitome 7, 25 ff. Names more than 120 names
  9. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 2, 93-110; 19, 134-156
  10. ↑ Homer, Odyssey 16, 206
  11. ^ Hyginus , Fabulae 127
  12. ↑ Hjalmar Frisk: Greek etymological dictionary. Volume II: Κρ-Ω, p. 529; Johannes Schmidt: Penelope . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Ed.): Detailed Lexicon of Greek and Roman Mythology , Sp. 1911–1914