Pandareus

Pandareus appears in the Odyssey not as a living character but as a name invoked to articulate the extremity of human grief. He is the father of daughters whose story Penelope recalls in a moment of profound despair, when she prays to Artemis for a swift death rather than endure the pressure to remarry. The tale of Pandareus's household functions as a mythological exemplum of total, undeserved ruin—a pattern that shadows Penelope's own situation and gives cosmic weight to her lament.

Mythological Background and the Fate of His Daughters

The core of Pandareus's presence in the poem is the story Penelope tells about his daughters. According to her account, the daughters of Pandareus lost both their parents when the gods killed them, leaving the girls as orphans. The goddesses themselves stepped in to care for them: Aphrodite fed them on cheese, honey, and sweet wine; Hera endowed them with surpassing beauty and intelligence; Artemis gave them stature; and Athena taught them every accomplishment. Yet this divine patronage did not lead to a happy end. When Aphrodite went to Olympus to ask Zeus to arrange marriages for the girls—since he alone knows what will and will not happen to everyone—the storm winds snatched them away and delivered them as handmaids to the dread Erinyes. The story thus moves from divine favor to catastrophic disappearance, with the gods themselves, for reasons never explained, permitting or causing the destruction of those they had nurtured.

Narrative Function: Penelope's Prayer to Artemis

Penelope invokes this myth in Book 20, during a sleepless night of anguish. Lying in her bed, she cries out to Artemis, asking the goddess to drive an arrow into her heart and kill her, or else to let a whirlwind carry her away and drop her into the mouth of Oceanus, "as it did the daughters of Pandareus." The parallel is exact: Penelope wishes for the same kind of sudden, divinely orchestrated removal from the world that befell those girls. The reference reveals the depth of her despair—she would prefer annihilation to the prospect of marrying one of the suitors—and it also aligns her with a pattern of innocent female suffering caused by forces beyond human control. The daughters of Pandareus were blameless, yet the gods destroyed them; Penelope, too, is blameless, yet she feels herself being destroyed by the suitors' predation and the apparent indifference of heaven.

Thematic Significance: Divine Cruelty and Human Helplessness

The Pandareus exemplum contributes to the Odyssey's broader meditation on the relationship between gods and mortals. Unlike the more famous stories of divine punishment for specific transgressions—such as Aegisthus's murder of Agamemnon or the suitors' violation of xenia—the fate of Pandareus's daughters has no moral cause. The gods simply killed the parents and then, after a period of care, allowed the children to be spirited away to serve the Erinyes. This randomness aligns with Penelope's sense that her own suffering is undeserved and that the gods may capriciously destroy even those who have done no wrong. The myth thus complicates the poem's dominant theological framework, in which suffering is usually linked to hubris or transgression, by introducing a note of inexplicable, arbitrary divine violence.

Connection to the Poem's Larger Patterns

Pandareus's name also resonates with other moments in the Odyssey where innocent figures are caught in the crossfire of divine will. The daughters of Pandareus, like Elpenor, like the crew who die through no fault of Odysseus's own planning, and like the suitors' herald Medon who fears for his life despite his innocence, represent those whom the gods sweep away without regard for personal merit. Penelope's use of the story is particularly pointed because she is herself a figure of enduring fidelity, yet she sees no guarantee that virtue will be rewarded. The Pandareus myth thus serves as a dark counterpoint to the poem's eventual restoration of order, reminding the audience that not every innocent sufferer in the Odyssey's world receives a happy ending.