τι φρούτο είναι τούτο; σα σύκο μοιάζει
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It was most likely a pomegranate that was the fruit of Eden.
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και τούτονε τα φρούτα τον εφάανε |
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This graphic, while in style unappealing and cutesy, in concept wonderfully captures the greater relation of Penelope’s waiting at home to Odysseus’s seafaring cycle of explorations and daring. It is from and to her that he ever moves the entire time, and it is she who is his very fate, his very tale, his very series of adventures and their fateful, fated resolution.
 Penelope, as merely a woman, endures the suitors and their ransacking her royal stores. Is there not, however, something in her endurance that is rather an allowance, a test of the authenticity of Odysseus’s return? This test is not issued by a woman, but by a goddess, a fate—his fate. In one of their countless possible interpretations, the suitors are Odysseus’s own lesser values, aversions, assumptions, and habits of soul that would keep him from being proven as her rightful spouse.
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