🏛️ Gorgocutie explains
Okay mythobabes, gather round — we’ve got a four-panel comic strip straight from Ithaca, and Penelope is NOT holding back.
This is Penelope, wife of Odysseus, queen of Ithaca, and the most patient woman in ancient Greek literature. While her husband was off having a 20-year adventure (ten years of Trojan War, ten years of getting lost because he pissed off Poseidon), Penelope was stuck at home dealing with 108 freeloading suitors who moved into her palace, ate her food, drank her wine, and kept asking her to marry them.
Frame 1: She’s writing Odysseus a letter. The surface message is “please come home.” The subtext is “I’m going to kill you myself if you don’t.”
Frame 2: The suitors swarm, all proposing marriage. Penelope’s legendary weaving trick (weave a shroud by day, unravel it by night) kept them at bay for three years before a maid snitched.
Frame 3: The ultimate violation — they ate her figs. This is the domestic reality Homer didn’t emphasize enough. While Odysseus was out there fighting Cyclopes, Penelope was dealing with the ancient Greek equivalent of roommates who eat your leftovers.
Frame 4: Her honest prayer. She wants Odysseus home with a very large weapon. And he delivered — when Odysseus finally returned, he slaughtered all 108 suitors with his bow in one of literature’s bloodiest homecomings.
The moral? If you’re going to eat a queen’s figs and propose to her while her husband is at war, maybe check whether that husband is the guy who came up with the Trojan Horse.
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