Character Analysis
Odysseus' mother; he talks with her in the Underworld and discovers that she's killed herself from grief: "that was the reason I perished, nor in my palace did the lady of arrows, well-aiming, come upon me with her painless shafts, and destroy me, nor was I visited by sickness, which beyond other things takes the life out of the body with hateful weakness, but, shining Odysseus, it was my longing for you, your cleverness and your gentle ways, that took the sweet spirit of life from me" (11.180-203). Aw. What a loving mom.