The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

Notes

The main source for The Penelopiad was Homer’s Odyssey, in the Penguin Classics edition, translated by E.V Rieu and revised by D.C.H. Rieu (1991).

Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths (Penguin) was crucial. The information about Penelope’s ancestry, her family relations Helen of Troy was her cousin—and much else, including the stories about her possible infidelity, are to be found there. (See Sections 160 and 171 in particular.) It is to Graves that I owe the theory of Penelope as a possible female-goddess cult leader, though oddly he does not note the significance of the numbers twelve and thirteen in relation to the unfortunate maids.

Graves lists numerous sources for the stories and their variants. These sources include Herodotus, Pausanias, Apollodorus, and Hyginus, among many.

The Homeric Hymns were also helpful—especially in relation to the god Hermes and Lewis Hyde’s Trickster Makes This World threw some light on the character of Odysseus.

The Chorus of Maids is a tribute to the use of such choruses in Greek drama. The convention of burlesquing the main action was present in the satyr plays performed before serious dramas.