Zethus

Zethus, the son of Zeus and Antiope, is a figure from the heroic age whose story is invoked twice in the Odyssey, each time to illuminate a different dimension of human suffering. He is best known as the co-founder of Thebes, which he and his twin brother Amphion fortified with a wall, but in Homer's poem his significance lies not in his architectural achievement but in the tragic fate of his household.

Identity and Mythological Background

Zethus was the son of Zeus and Antiope, daughter of the river god Asopus. According to the account Odysseus hears from the ghosts in the underworld, Antiope "could boast of having slept in the arms of even Jove himself, and who bore him two sons Amphion and Zethus. These founded Thebes with its seven gates, and built a wall all round it; for strong though they were they could not hold Thebes till they had walled it." This brief genealogy establishes Zethus as a founder-king, a builder of cities, and a figure of legitimate royal authority. His marriage to Aedon, the daughter of Pandareus, is not narrated in the Odyssey but is presupposed by the story Penelope tells.

Narrative Role: A Paradigm of Maternal Grief

Zethus enters the poem's emotional landscape through Penelope's extended simile of the nightingale. Lying awake and tormented by indecision about whether to remain faithful to Odysseus or marry one of the suitors, Penelope compares herself to "the dun nightingale, daughter of Pandareus, [who] sings in the early spring from her seat in shadiest covert hid, and with many a plaintive trill pours out the tale how by mishap she killed her own child Itylus, son of king Zethus." The allusion is to the myth in which Aedon, in a fit of jealous madness, accidentally killed her own son Itylus instead of the child of her rival. Transformed into a nightingale, she eternally mourns him. Penelope uses this story to articulate her own state of endless, unresolved grief: "even so does my mind toss and turn in its uncertainty whether I ought to stay with my son here, and safeguard my substance, my bondsmen, and the greatness of my house, out of regard to public opinion and the memory of my late husband, or whether it is not now time for me to go with the best of these suitors." Zethus, in this context, is the bereaved father, the king whose wife's unwitting crime destroyed his son and left him with a legacy of lamentation.

Thematic Significance: The Unbearable Weight of Choice

Zethus's appearance in the poem is confined to these two references, but they serve a crucial thematic function. In the underworld catalogue, he is part of a lineage of heroic founders, a figure of order and civilization. In Penelope's speech, he is the husband of a woman whose grief is eternal and self-inflicted. The juxtaposition of these two roles—founder and mourner—mirrors Penelope's own predicament: she is the queen of a great house, responsible for its preservation, yet she is also a woman paralyzed by sorrow and the fear of making a fatal choice. The story of Zethus and Aedon provides a mythological precedent for the idea that even the most legitimate and powerful households can be shattered by a single, irreversible act. Penelope's invocation of this myth underscores the gravity of her decision and the depth of her anguish, making Zethus a resonant, if peripheral, figure in the poem's exploration of loyalty, loss, and the terrible consequences of human error.