Odyssey 4.787 · Book 4, lines 787–790
Penelope, fasting, torn for her son
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ἡ δʼ ὑπερωίῳ αὖθι περίφρων Πηνελόπεια κεῖτʼ ἄρʼ ἄσιτος, ἄπαστος ἐδητύος ἠδὲ ποτῆτος, ὁρμαίνουσʼ ἤ οἱ θάνατον φύγοι υἱὸς ἀμύμων, ἦ ὅ γʼ ὑπὸ μνηστῆρσιν ὑπερφιάλοισι δαμείη.
And up in her chamber circumspect Penelope lay there fasting, tasting nothing of food or drink, pondering whether her noble son might escape death, or might be slain by the arrogant suitors.
Word by word
The setting
While the suitors fit out their ship, the scene cuts to Penelope in the women's quarters above the hall. She does not yet know of the ambush, only that Telemachus is gone.
A note on this passage
The cut is sharp: from men rigging a ship to a woman who cannot eat. Penelope lies in her upper room refusing food and drink, her mind swinging between the two things that might have become of Telemachus — a safe escape, or death at the suitors' hands. The double negative of food (ἄσιτος, ἄπαστος) piles the fasting up.
Her either/or is built like a warrior's deliberation, the same 'whether… or…' the poem gives its fighting men before a choice. But she has no choice to make and no act to take; the grammar of decision is spent on pure helpless dread. And the second branch names the exact horror the whole poem shadows: the son cut down by the men eating his house — Ithaca sliding toward the fate of Agamemnon's line.
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