Melantho (Ancient Greek: Μελανθώ), daughter of Dolius and sister of the goatherd Melanthius, is a disloyal handmaid in Homer's Odyssey. Though Penelope reared her as tenderly as her own child, she loved the suitor Eurymachus, lay with him, and twice rated the disguised Odysseus with shameful words.
Adapted from Wikipedia, "Melantho (Odyssey)" · CC BY-SA 4.0
I.Family and betrayal
Homer names Melantho as Dolius' daughter, twin sister to Melanthius. Penelope had reared her, given her playthings to her heart's desire, and looked after her as her own child — yet Melantho had no sorrow for her mistress.
She became Eurymachus' lover and is associated with the revelation of Penelope's shroud stratagem to the suitors: for three years the queen wove by day and unravelled by night until a maid betrayed the ruse.
II.Abuse of the stranger
Described as sharp-tongued, Melantho twice abuses Odysseus while he moves through the halls in beggar's rags. She asks why he has not gone to sleep in the smithy or the place of talk — lines Pausanias later cites as evidence for common meeting-places in Homer's day — and urges him to leave the house.
After the suitors fall, Eurycleia names twelve of the fifty housemaids who had consorted with the wooers; they are hanged in the courtyard. Melantho stands as the chief named type of that disloyal group.