Which disloyal maidservant sleeps with a suitor?

The disloyal maidservant who sleeps with a suitor is Melantho.

In Homer’s Odyssey, Melantho is one of Penelope’s household slaves and was raised with unusual affection, reportedly treated almost like a daughter. Despite that privileged upbringing, she becomes disloyal to Odysseus’s family and has a relationship with Eurymachus, one of Penelope’s leading suitors.

Melantho also helps expose Penelope’s deception. Penelope has promised to choose a husband after finishing a burial shroud for Laertes, but secretly unweaves the cloth each night. Melantho reveals this trick to the suitors, helping them continue their pressure on the queen.

Readers sometimes confuse Melantho with Melanthius, her brother, who is a goatherd and another servant hostile to Odysseus. Calypso, Helen, and Eurycleia are important women in the Odyssey, but none is the disloyal palace maid described here. After the suitors are killed, Homer does not clearly identify Melantho among the servant girls punished by Telemachus.