Source-groundedThe Odyssey
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Character · Individual

maid who revealed Penelope’s weaving

Published entity metadata

Read-only identity and editorial metadata.

Canonical name
maid who revealed Penelope’s weaving
Disambiguator
None
Kind
Character
Scope
Individual
Editorial note
The current source leaves this maid unnamed.

Aliases

0

No aliases recorded.

Location presence

Phase 6 currently covers 24 processed books.

0

No presence observations in the processed scope.

Claims

2
·Reported

A maid who knows Penelope’s secret reveals it to the suitors, enabling them to catch Penelope undoing her work.

See evidence text
“one of her maids who knew what she was doing told us, and we caught her in the act of undoing her work”
·Remembered

A maid who knew Penelope’s deception tells the suitors, enabling them to catch her undoing the work and force its completion.

See evidence text
“one of her maids who knew what she was doing told us, and we caught her in the act of undoing her work, so she had to finish it whether she would or no”

Additional evidence

Evidence records not already represented by a claim.

2
·Remembered
“one of her maids who knew what she was doing told us”
·Remembered
“one of her maids who knew what she was doing told us”

Passage preview

Book 2 · Passage 7

‘This was what she said, and we assented; whereon we could see her working on her great web all day long, but at night she would unpick the stitches again by torchlight. She fooled us in this way for three years and we never found her out, but as time wore on and she was now in her fourth year, one of her maids who knew what she was doing told us, and we caught her in the act of undoing her work, so she had to finish it whether she would or no. The suitors, therefore, make you this answer, that both you and the Achaeans may understand-’Send your mother away, and bid her marry the man of her own and of her father’s choice’; for I do not know what will happen if she goes on plaguing us much longer with the airs she gives herself on the score of the accomplishments Minerva has taught her, and because she is so clever. We never yet heard of such a woman; we know all about Tyro, Alcmena, Mycene, and the famous women of old, but they were nothing to your mother any one of them. It was not fair of her to treat us in that way, and as long as she continues in the mind with which heaven has now endowed her, so long shall we go on eating up your estate; and I do not see why she should change, for she gets all the honour and glory, and it is you who pay for it, not she. Understand, then, that we will not go back to our lands, neither here nor elsewhere, till she has made her choice and married some one or other of us.’