Artists have long admired the heroic adventures and life lessons woven throughout Homer’s epic poems, the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” They have captured episodes of these ancient Greek works countless times, always hoping to inspire viewers to cultivate virtue and to better themselves.
One popular muse is Homer’s Penelope, an honorable queen in the “Odyssey,” extolled for her prudence and marital fidelity. Homer wrote:
The fame of her great virtue will never die. The immortal gods will lift a song for all mankind, a glorious song in praise of self-possessed Penelope.
In the “Odyssey,” Queen Penelope’s husband, Odysseus, has been away from home fighting in the Trojan War for many years. Every day, suitors ask for the queen’s hand in marriage because Odysseus has been gone for so long and is presumed dead.
