Odyssey 2.89 · Book 2, lines 89–90
Three years of the trick
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ἤδη γὰρ τρίτον ἐστὶν ἔτος, τάχα δʼ εἶσι τέταρτον, ἐξ οὗ ἀτέμβει θυμὸν ἐνὶ στήθεσσιν Ἀχαιῶν.
For already it is the third year, and soon the fourth will come, since the time she cheats the hearts in the breasts of the Achaeans.
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The setting
Antinous begins to lay out his proof against Penelope: for nearly three full years now she has been deceiving the suitors, holding out false hope. The next lines (past this block) will tell the famous story of the loom she wove by day and unraveled by night.
A note on this passage
Antinous starts the timeline of the grievance. Going on four years, he says, Penelope has been ‘cheating’ the suitors’ hearts — keeping them fed on hope while committing to nothing. The verb ἀτέμβει means to balk or defraud, to leave a man’s expectation unpaid.
This is the setup for the poem’s most famous image, coming in the very next lines: the shroud on the loom, woven by day and undone by night. The reader should mark the frame it arrives in. The story of Penelope’s most celebrated act of loyalty is told first by her enemy, as a charge of fraud — proof that in the honor-world of Ithaca the same cleverness reads as virtue or crime depending entirely on who is counting the cost.
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