Penelope'S Web

Perhaps no story in Greek history brings out in as strong relief the devotion of a woman's heart as the story of Penelope.

When Menelaus, King of Sparta, called upon the Greek heroes to remember their vow to stand by him, and punish any one who might attempt to deprive him of his beautiful wife Helen, whom Paris had now carried away to Troy, they all responded to the call but Ulysses, King of Ithaca. He could not make up his mind to leave his own fair young wife, and son Telemachus, and enter upon a war which he knew would be long and severe. He feigned madness, but was detected in it, and forced at last to join in the expedition against Troy.

During the twenty years that Ulysses was absent,--ten spent in the siege of Troy, and ten returning,--Penelope was overwhelmed with suitors, who declared that Ulysses was dead, and that she must choose one among them as her husband. But with true devotion, cherishing the hope that Ulysses would yet return, she put off her numerous suitors, on the pretext that she must first finish the winding-sheet she was making for her father-in-law Laertes. In order to extend the time, she unravelled by night all she had woven during the day. Thus, a seemingly endless task is said to be "like Penelope's web." Her faithfulness was rewarded, at the end of twenty years, by the return of Ulysses.

The story of Ulysses' wanderings, temptations, and hardships, is the subject of the grand Greek epic of Homer, called the "Odyssey," from his right Greek name, "Odysseus."