Odyssey 4.718 · Book 4, lines 718–720
Sunk on the threshold, the maids wailing
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ἀλλʼ ἄρʼ ἐπʼ οὐδοῦ ἷζε πολυκμήτου θαλάμοιο οἴκτρʼ ὀλοφυρομένη· περὶ δὲ δμῳαὶ μινύριζον πᾶσαι, ὅσαι κατὰ δώματʼ ἔσαν νέαι ἠδὲ παλαιαί.
but she sat on the threshold of her well-wrought chamber, wailing piteously; and round about her the handmaids whimpered, all who were in the halls, young and old.
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The setting
Grief has driven Penelope from her chairs. This closes the Ithaca scene: the queen and her women in full lament while Telemachus is still away at sea.
A note on this passage
She sinks instead onto the threshold of her richly-wrought chamber and weeps aloud, and the sound spreads: all around her the serving-women whimper, every maid in the house, the young girls and the old.
The place she chooses says everything. A threshold is where you cross, not where a queen sits; she has gone from her chairs to the bare stone of a doorway, as low as the house allows. And her grief is not private — it pulls the whole household of women into a single keening, young and old together. Homer ends the scene, and the book's Ithacan half, on a house turned wholly to mourning, waiting on a son who is already at sea.
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