# Penelope’s Parasites



## Flanders (Mar 25, 2016)

*It has been at least 60 years since I read The Odyssey.  So I have to thank Daniel J. Flynn for pointing out something I never saw. That is the connection between parasites and Penelope. If I was blessed with the required artistic skills, I would redo the scene and paint the faces of today’s top Democrats on the suitors: *






Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, Ulysses’ revenge on Penelope’s suitors. (1814) (Wikimedia Commons)​http://cdn.spectator.org/styles/art...t 2016-03-24 at 10.15.07 PM.png?itok=FJaYRq_u

In _The Odyssey_, Odysseus’s family endures the suitors, a group of more than 100 men sponging off them under the pretext that they seek Penelope’s hand in marriage, after enduring the prolonged absence of the family patriarch. Rather than gratitude, the parasites repay the beleaguered family with contempt and conspiracies.

   When Odysseus, disguised as a beggar after his return from the Trojan War, strings a bow that the beggars disguised as suitors cannot, they resolve to deny Odysseus the food that’s not theirs to withhold and the common decency that they lack to give. Eurymachus laments the beggar’s bow-and-arrow feats eclipsing the talents of the suitors, “This is what will be said, and it will be a scandal against us.”

The West’s Parasites Again Become Its Predators
       Forgetting who we are we means we can’t begin to defend our civilization.
       By Daniel J. Flynn – 3.25.16

The West’s Parasites Again Become Its Predators​


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