Odyssey 2.121 · Book 2, lines 121–126
None had wits like Penelope's
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Antinous — τάων οὔ τις ὁμοῖα νοήματα Πηνελοπείῃ ᾔδη· ἀτὰρ μὲν τοῦτό γʼ ἐναίσιμον οὐκ ἐνόησε. τόφρα γὰρ οὖν βίοτόν τε τεὸν καὶ κτήματʼ ἔδονται, ὄφρα κε κείνη τοῦτον ἔχῃ νόον, ὅν τινά οἱ νῦν ἐν στήθεσσι τιθεῖσι θεοί. μέγα μὲν κλέος αὐτῇ ποιεῖτʼ, αὐτὰρ σοί γε ποθὴν πολέος βιότοιο.
Of those women not one knew devices to match Penelope's — yet this, at least, she did not devise rightly. For just so long will they devour your livelihood and your goods, as long as she keeps this purpose that the gods now set for her in her breast. Great glory indeed she wins for herself, but for you, the loss of much substance.
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The setting
Antinous, chief of the suitors, is finishing his speech to the assembled Ithacans. He has just named the cunning women of old and now sets Penelope above them all — her three years' trick of the loom already exposed.
A note on this passage
Antinous ends his case with a backhanded tribute: no woman of the old songs had a mind to match Penelope's — but in this one thing she has miscalculated. Her reward for the cleverness, he says, is glory for herself and ruin for her son, whose estate the suitors will eat as long as she holds out.
The barb is in the word ἐναίσιμον, 'fittingly.' Her stratagem was brilliant, yet 'not devised rightly' — praise and blame welded into one line. And the honor economy shows its cruelty: κλέος, the glory a Greek lives for, is here a prize a woman wins at her household's cost. Antinous frames the suitors' plunder as the natural interest on Penelope's fame.
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