"Then, when the wheeling seasons brought the fourth year on,
one of her women, in on the queen’s secret, told the truth
and we caught her in the act – unweaving her gorgeous web.
So she finished it off. Against her will. We forced her."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 2, lines 119-122. Antinous tells Telemachus how Penelope’s clever plan to fool the suitors is betrayed by one of her servants. The queen cleverly holds off remarriage by pretending to weave a shoud on her loom for the eventual funeral of her father-in-law. The deception goes on for three years, until the suitors learn from one of the disloyal women servants that Penelope is unweaving the shoud every night.