What’s in a name? 

In The Odyssey, we find Homer sharing the story of Penelope at her loom. Ten years have passed since the close of the Trojan War, yet Odysseus has not returned. In faith, his wife, Penelope, awaits his homecoming while a group of suitors vie for her hand in marriage and feast on the absent king’s resources. In defiance to their efforts, she tactically determines a means to subvert them.

In resistance to choosing a new husband grounded in her loyalty to Odysseus, Penelope wisely requests time to weave a death shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, before a decision is fixed. During the day, Penelope faithfully interworks the threads into a death-cloak, yet at night, she labors to unravel the frame of ticking-time for the sake of her husband’s long-awaited return home.

When Odysseus is once more in his Ithaka, Penelope shares with him (unknowingly), the craftiness of her time-burning:

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I yearn for Odysseus, always, my heart pines away.

They rush the marriage on, and I spin out my wiles.

A god from the blue it was inspired me first

to set up a great loom in our royal halls 

and I began to weave, and the weaving finespun, 

the yarn endless, and I would lead them on: ‘Young men, 

my suitors, now that King Odysseus is no more, 

go slowly, keen as you are to marry me, until 

I can finish my web…

so my weaving won’t all fray and come to nothing…

(Bk xix, 151-160)

The story of Laertes’ shroud woven by Penelope during the day and dismembered by night to keep the suitors at bay is the only narrative told with distinctive congruence three times throughout Homer (Lowenstam). It is woven with each telling revealing further depth to its importance—a conversation that pulsates through time. 

At the loom, Penelope is focused and thoughtful. She is cunning. She is land-anchored. She resists. She tethers the past and future to the present. And as Eva Brann shares in her book, Homeric Moments: Clues To Delight In Reading The Odyssey and The Iliad, the weaving is a, “grand multipurpose strategem…the worthy counterpart to her husband’s Trojan Horse,” (258). 

Thus, it is of our hearts at Axiom Christian Classical School to provide a time and place for community that chooses to mindfully linger at the loom, awaiting the King as we keep the threads of truth, beauty, and goodness before us; laboring, thinking, conversing, and remembering together in love.

Unlike Penelope, we are not alone. Let us act accordingly. May we gather and feast on the gifts woven into one another as we endeavor to live with wisdom and virtue—for the loom always whispers the hope of life. 

Taking apart the cover of darkness fabricates

Light, and Time itself goes forward by unraveling:

So the queen’s dismembering hand weaves the images

Of faith and remembrance on the bared warp of her loom.

- John Hollander, Powers of Thirteen: Poem 115