Melantho

Melantho, also known as Melántho or Melanthó (Μελανθώ), is one of the minor characters in The Odyssey. Described as having a "sharp tongue", she is sister to Melanthios, a goatherd in Ithaca, and the daughter of Dolios. She is among the favorite maids of Penelope, treated like a daughter by her, having been given trinkets and other small gifts.^[1]

Despite having been much cared for by Penelope, Melantho is a disloyal and ungrateful servant to Odysseus and his household. She is one of the female servants that often sleep with the suitors of Penelope, a characteristic which is evident by her relationship with Eurymachus.^[2] Upon Odysseus' arrival in his own house, dressed as a beggar, Melantho rates him harshly and rudely asks why he hasn't left to sleep in the smithy, the location where chance visitors in Ithaca tended to go.^[3][4]

After Odysseus kills all of the suitors and forces the unfaithful maids to clean the hall, Telemachus hangs Melantho along with the other unfaithful maids.^[5]

The name Melantho may also refer to several other minor Greek mythological figures:

• Daughter of Deucalion, whom Poseidon seduced in the shape of a dolphin.^[6] She had by him a son Delphus^[7].

• Wife of Criasus, mother of Phorbas, Ereuthalion and Cleoboea.^[8]

References

1. ^ Odyssey, 18. 322
2. ^ Od. 18. 325
3. ^ Od. 18. 326 ff; 19. 65. ff
4. ^ Also quoted in Pausanias, Description of Greece, 10. 25. 1
5. ^ Od. 22. 458 - 470
6. ^ Ovid, Metamorphoses, 6. 120
7. ^ Tzetzes on Lycophron, 209
8. ^ Scholia on Euripides, Orestes, 932