Odyssey 2.106 · Book 2, lines 106–109
Three years, then betrayed
Read the full text in our reader
ὣς τρίετες μὲν ἔληθε δόλῳ καὶ ἔπειθεν Ἀχαιούς· ἀλλʼ ὅτε τέτρατον ἦλθεν ἔτος καὶ ἐπήλυθον ὧραι, καὶ τότε δή τις ἔειπε γυναικῶν, ἣ σάφα ᾔδη, καὶ τήν γʼ ἀλλύουσαν ἐφεύρομεν ἀγλαὸν ἱστόν.
So for three years she went undetected by her guile and kept beguiling the Achaeans; but when the fourth year came and the seasons rolled on, then at last one of the women, who knew it clearly, told of it, and we caught her unravelling the splendid web.
Word by word
The setting
The trick held for three full years, until the fourth. Antinous tells how the deception finally broke: one of the household women, who knew the secret, gave it away, and the suitors caught Penelope in the act of undoing her weaving.
A note on this passage
The span is stated flatly: three years of a working deceit, broken in the fourth. The turning point is small and domestic — not a god, not a hero, but a serving-woman who knew and talked. The great scheme is undone by the ordinary fact that a household keeps no secret forever.
The undercurrent is the betrayal from within. Penelope's cunning could outlast the suitors indefinitely; what it could not survive was a member of her own house. The poem is quietly building its theme of the household as a battleground of loyalties, where the disloyal servants matter as much as the men at the door — a reckoning the maids will meet by the end.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 2.106 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 2.106 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/2.106/