"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."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 24, lines 216-218. Speaking about Penelope in the underworld, Agamemnon’s ghost has high praise for the faithfulness of the wife of Odysseus. This is after Agamemnon hears about Penelope’s resistence of the suitors and her cunning in frustrating them by weaving a shroud for Laertes and nightly unraveling it. To the loyal Penelope, who chose to wait twenty years for the return of Odysseus and could have taken up with a suitor, Homer attributes the highest honors. She is seen as embodying the ideal wife, the paragon of marital fidelity, a model of self-restraint. Penelope is one of the main heroes of Homer’s epic poem.