re-invents and adapts a finite number of timeless concepts and structures of meaning. In The Penelopiad, Atwood re-writes archetypes of female passivity and victimization while using contemporary ideas of justice and a variety of genres. The edition of the Odyssey that Atwood read was the E. V. Rieu and D. C. H. Rieu's translation. For research she consulted Robert Graves' The Greek Myths. Graves, an adherent to Samuel Butler's theory that the Odyssey was written by a woman, also wrote The White Goddess, which formed the basis of the Maid's anthropology lecture. Atwood seems to have been unaware of A D Hope's earlier intense moral questioning of the story of Odysseus hanging the maids. In Hope's 1960s poem "The End of the Journey" Penelope and Odysseus pass an unhappy night after the slaughter of the suitors and the maids, and wake to a scene of horror: "Each with her broken neck, each with a blank,/Small strangled face, the dead girls in a row /Swung as the cold airs moved them to and fro". Atwood had previously written using themes and characters from ancient Greek myths. She wrote a short story in Ovid Metamorphosed called The Elysium Lifestyle Mansions re-telling a myth with Apollo and the immortal prophet the Sibyl from the perspective of the latter living in the modern age. Her 1993 novel The Robber Bride roughly parallels the Iliad but is set in Toronto. In that novel the characters Tony and Zenia share the same animosity and competition as Penelope and Helen in The Penelopiad. Her poem "Circe: Mud Poems", published in 1976, casts doubt on Penelope's honourable image: She's up to something, she's weaving histories, they are never right, she has to do them over, she is weaving her version[...] Atwood published "Helen of Troy Does Counter Dancing" in her 1996 collection Morning in the Burned House in which Helen appears in a contemporary setting as an erotic dancer and justifies her exploitation as men fantasize over her: You think I'm not a goddess? Try me. This is a torch song. Touch me and you'll burn. Publication The hardcover version of The Penelopiad was published on 21 October 2005 as a part of the launch of Canongate Myth Series, which also included A History of Myth by Karen Armstrong and a third title chosen by each publisher (most chose Weight by Jeanette Winterson). The Penelopiad was translated into