Penelope. In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope is the wife of Odysseus, who is known for her fidelity to Odysseus while he was absent, despite having many suitors. Her name has therefore been traditionally associated with marital fidelity. The origin of her name is believed by Robert S. P. Beekes to be Pre-Greek and related to penelops or penelops, glossed by Hesychius as some kind of bird, where-elops is a common Pre-Greek suffix for predatory animals; however, the semantic relation between the proper name and the gloss is not clear. In folk etymology, Penelope is usually understood to combine the Greek word pene, weft, and ops, face, which is considered the most appropriate for a cunning weaver whose motivation is hard to decipher. Penelope is the wife of the main character, the king of Ithaca, Odysseus, and daughter of Icarius of Sparta and his wife Periboea. She only has one son by Odysseus, Telemachus, who was born just before Odysseus was called to fight in the Trojan War. She waits twenty years for the final return of her husband, during which she devises various strategies to delay marrying one of the 108 suitors. On Odysseus's return, disguised as an old beggar, he finds that Penelope has remained faithful. She has devised tricks to delay her suitors, one of which is to pretend to be weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus's elderly father Laertes and claiming that she will choose a suitor when she has finished. Every night for three years, she undoes part of the shroud, until Melantho, one of twelve unfaithful slave women, discovers her chicanery and reveals it to the suitors. Because of her efforts to put off remarriage, Penelope is often seen as a symbol of connubial fidelity. But because Athena wants her to show herself to the wooers, that she might set their hearts a-flutter and win greater honor from her husband and her son than heretofore, Penelope does eventually appear before the suitors. As Irene de Jong comments: As so often, it is Athena who takes the initiative in giving the story a new direction. Usually the motives of mortal and god coincide, here they do not: Athena wants Penelope to fan the Suitors' desire for her and make her more esteemed by her husband and son; Penelope has no real motive. she simply feels an unprecedented impulse to meet the men she so loathes. adding that she might take this opportunity to talk to Telemachus. She is ambivalent, variously asking Artemis to kill her and, apparently, considering marrying one of the suitors. When the disguised Odysseus returns, she announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus's rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe heads may have her hand. For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero. There is debate as to whether Penelope is aware that Odysseus is behind the disguise. Penelope and the suitors know that Odysseus would easily surpass all in any test of masculine skill, so she may have intentionally started the contest as an opportunity for him to reveal his identity. On the other hand, because Odysseus seems to be the only person who can actually use the bow, she could just be further delaying her marriage to one of the suitors. When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors are able to string the bow, but Odysseus does, and wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors, beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus' cup, with help from Telemachus, Athena and two slaves, Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd. Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory; yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned, she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene, and tests him by ordering her slave Eurycleia to move the bed in their bridal-chamber. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope finally accepts that he truly is her husband, a moment that highlights their homophrosyne. Homer implies, that from then on, Odysseus would live a long and happy life together with Penelope and Telemachus, wisely ruling his kingdom and enjoying wide respect and much success. In some early sources such as Pindar, Pan's father is Apollo via Penelope. Herodotus, Cicero, Apollodorus and Hyginus all make Hermes and Penelope his parents. Pausanias 8.12.5 records the story that Penelope had in fact been unfaithful to her husband, who banished her to Mantineia upon his return.