“_Were far less stately and less fair to view, Being but mortal woman, nor like you Ageless and deathless: but even so, I long and yearn to see my home anew._“[7] The keynote of the _Odyssey_ is struck here; and here too we may find a hint of all that Penelope means. The thought of home is to dominate the poem, as something so dear and sacred that innumerable toils are suffered and infinite perils undergone to win back to it. And this shining ideal of home is to be incarnate in Penelope. She is to represent in her own person all that sweetens and comforts life: all the domestic virtues which establish and perpetuate it. Thus, beside Helen as the ideal of beauty—of physical perfection—Penelope stands as the ideal of mental and moral worth. * * * * * Telemachus, whom Odysseus had left at home as a baby twenty years before, had been sent by Athena to seek his father. The goddess had appeared to him as he sat in his father’s hall in Ithaca, lowering upon those unbidden guests who were his mother’s suitors. She had asked what the unseemly revel might mean; and he had told of the long absence of his father. “_Ah but the spirits of storm to a death inglorious swept him, Vanished, unseen and unheard of; and nothing but mourning and anguish Me he bequeathed! Nor now do I sorrow and make lamentation Only for him; for the gods send other and grievous afflictions. All of the chief of the men who as princes rule in the islands.... All come wooing my mother and wasting the wealth of the homestead. She dares neither reject their hateful proposals of marriage, Nor can she end it; and thus do the men, consuming, devouring, Ruin my home...._”[8] The goddess counselled immediate action—to go and seek Odysseus; and while the minstrel sang to the carousing suitors, Telemachus inwardly resolved that he would set sail as soon as might be for Pylos and Sparta, whither Athena directed him for tidings of his father. But he knew that he must act quietly; and above all, that his purpose must be kept a secret from his mother. She would certainly prevent his going, did she know, fearing to lose son as well as husband. Meantime, as he pondered the matter, Penelope was listening from her lofty bower to the minstrel’s song in the hall below. He sang of the return of the heroes from Troy; and the words reawakened in her the old pain of longing for her husband. At last she could not bear to hear it any longer: