Pēnĕlŏpe

, a celebrated prince of Greece, daughter of Icarius, and wife of Uly es king of Ithaca. Her marriage with Uly es was celebrated about the same time that Menelaus married Helen, and she retired with her husband to Ithaca, against the inclination of her father, who wished to detain her at Sparta, her native country. She soon after became mother of Tele mach us, and was obliged to part with great reluctance from her husband, whom the Greeks obliged to go to the Trojan war. See: Palamedes . The continuation of hostilities for 10 years made her sad and melancholy; but when Uly es did not return like the other princes of Greece at the conclusion of the war, her fears and her anxieties were increased. As she received no intelligence of his situation, she was soon beset by a number of importuning suitors, who wished her to believe that her husband was shipwrecked, and that therefore, she ought no longer to expect his return, but forget his lo , and fix her choice and affections on one of her numerous admirers. She received their addre es with coldne and disdain; but as she was destitute of power, and a prisoner, as it were, in their hands, she yet flattered them with hopes and promises, and declared that she would make choice of one of them, as soon as she had finished a piece of tapestry, on which she was employed. The work was done in a dilatory manner, and she baffled their eager expectations, by undoing in the night what she had done in the daytime. This artifice of Penelope has given rise to the proverb of Penelope’s web , which is applied to whatever labour can never be ended. The return of Uly es, after an absence of 20 years, however, delivered her from her fears and from her dangerous suitors. Penelope is described by Homer as a model of female virtue and chastity, but some more modern writers dispute her claims to modesty and continence, and they represent her as the most debauched and voluptuous of her sex. According to their opinions, therefore, she liberally gratified the desires of her suitors, in the absence of her husband, and had a son whom she called Pan, as if to show that he was the offspring of all her admirers. Some, however, suppose that Pan was son of Penelope by Mercury, and that he was born before his mother’s marriage with Uly es. The god, as it is said, deceived Penelope, under the form of a beautiful goat, as she was tending her father’s flocks on one of the mountains of Arcadia. After the return of Uly es, Penelope had a daughter, who was called Ptoliporthe; but if we believe the traditions that were long preserved at Mantinea, Uly es repudiated his wife for her incontinence during his absence, and Penelope fled to Sparta, and afterwards to Mantinea, where she died and was buried. After the death of Uly es, according to Hyginus, she married Telegonus, her husband’s son by Circe, by order of the godde Minerva. Some say that her original name was Arnea, or Amirace, and that she was called Penelope, when some river birds called Pen elopes had saved her from the waves of the sea, when her father had exposed her. Icarius had attempted to destroy her, because the oracles had told him that his daughter by Peribœa would be the most di olute of her sex, and a disgrace to his family. Apollo dor us , bk. 3 , ch. 10 .— Pausanias , bk. 3 , ch. 12 .— Homer , Iliad & Ody ey .— Ovid , Heroides , poem 1; Metamorphoses .— Aristotle , History of Animals , bk. 8 .— Hyginus , fable 127.— Aris toph anes , The Birds .— Pliny , bk. 37 .