Aiton’s Encyclopedia
A Practical Reference Library in Five Volumes — keyed from the public-domain original
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Penelope

pe-nel'o-pe, in Greek legend, the wife of Ulysses and mother of Telemachus, who was but an infant when his father left home for Troy. During the ten years' siege and the years that followed before Ulysses reached home again, Penelope, who was a beautiful woman, had many suitors. They tried to persuade her that her husband was dead. She promised to choose a husband as soon as she had finished the weaving of a web to be used for the funeral canopy of Laertes, her husband's father. She worked at the web each day, but at night unraveled all she had woven. Thus Penelope's web has become proverbial as a thing constantly in process of construction, but never completed. See Ulysses

Penelope
Volume IV · Aiton’s Encyclopedia