The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

XX. Slanderous Gossip

At this point I feel I must address the various items of slanderous gossip that have been going the rounds for the past two or three thousand years.

These stories are completely untrue. Many have said that there’s no smoke without fire, but that is a fatuous argument. We’ve all heard rumours that later proved to be entirely groundless, and so it is with these rumours about me.

The charges concern my sexual conduct. It is alleged, for instance, that I slept with Amphinomus, the politest of the Suitors. The songs say I found his conversation agreeable, or more agreeable than that of the others, and this is true; but it’s a long jump from there into bed. It’s also true that I led the Suitors on and made private promises to some of them, but this was a matter of policy. Among other things, I used my supposed encouragement to extract expensive gifts from them scant return for everything they’d eaten and wasted—and I draw your attention to the fact that Odysseus himself witnessed and approved of my action.

The more outrageous versions have it that I slept with all of the Suitors, one after another over a hundred of them and then gave birth to the Great

God Pan. Who could believe such a monstrous tale?

Some songs aren’t worth the breath expended on them.

Various commentators have cited my mother-in law, Anticleia, who said nothing about the Suitors when Odysseus spoke to her spirit on the Island of the Dead. Her silence is taken as proof: if she’d mentioned the Suitors at all, they say, she would have had to mention my infidelity as well. Maybe she did mean to plant a toxic seed in the mind of Odysseus, but you already know about her attitude towards me. It would have been her final acid touch.

Others have noted the fact that I did not dismiss or punish the twelve impudent maids, or shut them up in an outbuilding to grind corn, so I must have been indulging in the same kind of sluttery myself.

But I have explained all that.

A more serious charge is that Odysseus didn’t reveal himself to me when he first returned. He distrusted me, it is said, and wanted to make sure

I wasn’t having orgies in the palace. But the real reason was that he was afraid I would cry tears of joy and thus give him away. Similarly, he had me locked in the women’s quarters with the rest of the women when he was slaughtering the Suitors, and he relied on Eurycleia’s help, not on mine. But he knew me well my tender heart, my habit of dissolving in tears and falling down on thresholds. He simply didn’t want to expose me to dangers and disagreeable sights. Surely that is the obvious explanation for his behaviour.

If my husband had learned of the slanders during our lifetimes, he certainly would have ripped out a few tongues. But there’s no sense in brooding over lost opportunities.