"Like Pandareus’ daughter, the nightingale in the green woods
lifting her lovely song at the first warm rush of spring,
perched in the treetops’ rustling leaves and pouring forth
her music shifting, trilling and sinking, rippling high to burst
in grief for Itylus, her beloved boy, King Zethus’ son
whom she in innocence once cut down with bronze…
so my wavering heart goes shuttling, back and forth."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 19, lines 585-591. Penelope tells the disguised Odysseus about the anxieties she feels each night in bed, contemplating whether to marry a suitor or not. An epic simile compares her quivering heart to a nightingale singing a song of grief in the woods – like Pandareus’ daughter Aedon. Aedon killed her own son Itylus by mistake and Zeus changed her into a nightingale, forever mourning her son.