Odyssey 4.795 · Book 4, lines 795–798
Athena makes the phantom
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ἔνθʼ αὖτʼ ἄλλʼ ἐνόησε θεά, γλαυκῶπις Ἀθήνη· εἴδωλον ποίησε, δέμας δʼ ἤικτο γυναικί, Ἰφθίμῃ, κούρῃ μεγαλήτορος Ἰκαρίοιο, τὴν Εὔμηλος ὄπυιε Φερῇς ἔνι οἰκία ναίων.
Then in turn the goddess devised another course, bright-eyed Athena: she made a phantom, and in form it was like a woman, Iphthime, the daughter of great-hearted Icarius, whom Eumelus had wedded, dwelling in his home in Pherae.
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The setting
With Penelope asleep, Athena acts. She fashions a dream-figure in the likeness of Penelope's married sister Iphthime, to send as a comforting apparition. Iphthime lives far off in Pherae in Thessaly, wife of Eumelus.
A note on this passage
Athena devises her remedy. She makes an εἴδωλον — a phantom shaped to the exact likeness of a real woman, Penelope's own sister Iphthime, given a genealogy and a husband and a home far away in Pherae, so the sleeper will trust the face. The dream is not a vision Penelope conjures; it is manufactured and dispatched.
The word εἴδωλον is doing quiet work. It is the term for a wraith of the dead and for the fashioned image — the same kind of made likeness later tradition sends to Troy in place of Helen. The comfort Penelope is about to receive is engineered, a god's fabricated double of a loved one. Homer does not hide it: her consolation is real relief and also a thing built to be believed.
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