Penelope

Penelope, in Homeric legend, the wife of Ulysses (Odysseus), and mother of Telemachus, who was still an infant when Ulysses went to the Trojan war. During his long wanderings after the fall of Troy he was generally regarded as dead, and Penelope was vexed by the urgent wooing of many suitors, whom she put off on the pretext that she must first weave a shroud for Laertes, her aged father-in-law. To protract the time she undid by night the portion of the web which she had woven by day. When the suitors had discovered this device her position became more difficult than before; but fortunately Ulysses returned in time to rescue his chaste spouse from their distasteful importunities. Later tradition represents Penelope in a very different light, asserting that by Hermes (Mercury), or by all her suitors together, she became the mother of Pan (q.v.), and that Ulysses, on his return, divorced her.