Chapter summary
Odysseus leaves the harbor and climbs a rough path, through woods and hills, to the house of the swineherd Eumaeus, to whom Athena had sent him because he was, among the servants, the one who most cared for his master's goods. He finds him seated at the entrance of a large, round courtyard that Eumaeus himself built for the swine after the king's departure, without the mistress or the old man Laertes knowing: a stone wall topped with thorns, oak stakes on the outside, and twelve pens inside, with fifty sows in each. The boars sleep outside and are far fewer, because the suitors have been reducing them at table: Eumaeus is obliged to send them the best pig every day. Four fierce dogs guard the place. Eumaeus is cutting sandals from oxhide; three herdsmen are in the pasture with the swine, and the fourth has gone to the city to take a pig to the suitors.
The dogs catch sight of Odysseus and rush at him, and he, with cunning, sits down and lets his staff fall. Eumaeus runs out, drives the dogs off with stones, and rebukes the stranger: he nearly was torn to pieces, which would have covered Eumaeus with shame. He says he already has enough grief, for he mourns his master and raises fat pigs for others to eat, while his master perhaps wanders hungry among peoples of strange speech, if he is still alive. He invites the old man to come in, eat, and tell where he comes from and what he has suffered, and he settles him on branches and a large wild goat skin, his own bed. Odysseus thanks him and asks Zeus to give Eumaeus what he desires most. Eumaeus replies that it is not lawful to dishonor a stranger, because all strangers and beggars come from Zeus, and that what he gives is little: the lot of servants is to live in fear under young masters, and the gods have prevented the return of the man who would have given him a house, land, and a wife, as one gives to a servant who works well. He curses the lineage of Helen, who made so many men perish, among them his own master, who went to Troy for the sake of Agamemnon's honor.
Eumaeus kills and roasts two young pigs, serves them hot on the spits with white flour, mixes wine in an ivy cup, and sits down before his guest. He says the piglets are what is fitting for servants, and that the fattened pigs are eaten by the suitors, who have no fear of the gods or compassion. The gods, he says, do not love cruel deeds but honor justice, and even pirates fear punishment. The suitors seem to know something, through the voice of some god, about their master's death, and for that reason they refuse to court decently or to return home: they devour the goods without sparing anything, and sacrifice more than one head of cattle a day. Eumaeus describes Odysseus's wealth, which no other hero matched: twelve herds of cattle on the mainland and eleven flocks of goats on the island, and he himself tends the swine and sends the best of them to the suitors every day. Odysseus eats and drinks in silence, planning evil against the suitors.
After eating, Odysseus asks who bought Eumaeus, that man of so many possessions, saying that he may have seen him on his travels and could bring news. Eumaeus replies that no wanderer has brought news that might convince his mistress and son: vagrants, in need of care, lie, and whoever comes to Ithaca goes to the queen with false stories, and she, welcoming him, weeps as is the custom. He also says that the old man would quickly invent a story too if he were given a cloak and a tunic, and that his master must be dead, eaten by dogs and birds or by fish, with his bones on the sand. He grieves for him more than for his own parents. He confesses that he is ashamed to name his master, even absent, because he loved him and cared for him, and he calls him "dear brother."
Odysseus replies that he not only says but swears that his master will return: he asks, as a reward for good news, for a cloak and a tunic, but only after the return, because he hates, as much as the gates of Hades, the one who yields to poverty and speaks falsehoods. He swears by Zeus, by the hospitable table, and by the hearth of Odysseus that he will arrive in this same year, between the waning of one month and the beginning of the next, and will take vengeance on those who here dishonor his wife and son. Eumaeus refuses: he will not pay for good news, because Odysseus will not return, and he asks that they change the subject, for remembering his master pains him. He speaks of Telemachus, raised by the gods like a sapling and who seemed destined to equal his father, and who has now gone to Pylos in search of news, while the suitors lie in wait for him on his return so that the line of Arcesius may vanish from Ithaca without a name. He leaves the boy to fate and to Zeus, and asks the guest to tell the truth about who he is and how he came, for he does not believe he came on foot.
Odysseus replies with an invented story. He says he is Cretan, the son of a rich man and of a purchased concubine, but honored by Castor as if he were a legitimate son; after Castor's death, the legitimate sons divided the goods and gave him little and a house, and he married the daughter of a wealthy family for her worth, which was that of war and ships, not of field and house. He went to Troy with Idomeneus, because he could not refuse without gaining bad repute; he came back, and after a month, set out with nine ships for Egypt. His companions, loosened by insolence, plundered the Egyptian fields and carried off women and children; the Egyptians came at dawn, and Zeus put fear into the companions: many died, others were enslaved. He dropped helmet, shield, and spear, embraced the knees of the king, who saved him and took him home, and held back those who wanted to kill him for fear of Zeus of hospitality. He stayed seven years in Egypt, growing rich; in the eighth came a deceitful Phoenician, who took him to Phoenicia and, a year later, to a ship bound for Libya, intending to sell him. At sea, Zeus hurled a thunderbolt that destroyed the ship; he clung to the mast for nine days, and the wave cast him onto the land of the Thesprotians, where King Phidon took him in without asking for ransom, and the king's son clothed him. There he heard of Odysseus: Phidon showed him the treasures that Odysseus had gathered and said that he had gone to Dodona to consult the oak of Zeus about how to return to Ithaca, openly or in secret, and swore that the ship was ready to carry him. But Phidon sent the guest ahead, on a Thesprotian ship, to Dulichium, to King Acastus, and the crew planned to make him a slave: they stripped him and gave him the rags Eumaeus sees, and on arriving at Ithaca, in the afternoon, they tied him up in the ship. The gods loosened the ropes; he wrapped himself in the rags, slid down the rudder and swam, hid in the woods, and the gods led him to the house of a sensible man.
Eumaeus is moved, but says the guest was not sincere about one thing: what he says about Odysseus. He will not accept being deceived: Odysseus was hated by the gods, for he did not die among the Trojans nor in the arms of friends, who would have built him a tomb and left fame to his son; the Harpies snatched him away without glory. Eumaeus himself lives apart, with the swine, and goes to the city only when Penelope summons him for some news; he was deceived by an Aetolian, who told him he had seen Odysseus in Crete repairing ships and that he would come back in the summer with treasures. He asks the guest not to try to please him with lies: he welcomes him out of fear of Zeus of hospitality and out of pity. Odysseus retorts that his mind is very unbelieving and proposes a pact with the gods as witnesses: if the master returns, he will receive clothes and be sent to Dulichium; if not, the servants may throw him off a rock, so that no other beggar dares to deceive him. Eumaeus refuses: what fame would he have, among the men of today and of times to come, if he welcomed the guest and then killed him? He interrupts the conversation because it is suppertime.
The other swineherds return with the pigs, which are herded in amid grunting. Eumaeus has the best pig brought for the guest, and says the servants will eat too, since they toil over the pigs while others devour the fruit of their labor. He splits wood, and the five-year-old pig is killed; Eumaeus, who does not forget the immortals, throws the first offerings into the fire and prays that Odysseus return home. He divides the meat into seven portions, one for the nymphs and Hermes, the others for the guests, and gives Odysseus the whole loin, which pleases the master. Odysseus wishes Eumaeus the friendship of Zeus the Father; Eumaeus replies that Zeus gives one thing and withholds another, as he pleases. Mesaulius, a servant whom Eumaeus bought from the Taphians with his own means, distributes the bread.
Night falls dark, with rain and the Zephyr wind. Odysseus wants to see whether Eumaeus will give him a cloak or have one of the other men do so, and he begins by saying that the wine obliges him to tell a story. He tells of an ambush before Troy, in which he commanded alongside Menelaus: the night was of snow and ice, everyone had cloaks, and he, out of carelessness, had left his own behind. In the last third of the night he nudged Odysseus, who was beside him, and said he was going to die of cold. Odysseus, quick in mind, told him to be quiet, invented a divine dream before the others, and asked someone to go and tell Agamemnon that they were far from the ships and needed more men. Thoas ran off, leaving his purple cloak, and the narrator slept wrapped in it until dawn. He ends by saying that if he were young as he was then, some swineherd would give him a cloak, out of friendship and respect for a man; now they despise him for his poor clothes. Eumaeus praises the story, which had no word out of measure, and promises him covering, but says that tomorrow he will return to rags, because there no one has spare cloaks; when the son of Odysseus arrives, he will give clothes and send him wherever he wishes. He prepares a bed for him by the fire, with sheepskins and goatskins, and covers him with a thick, large cloak that he kept for winter.
The young men lie down beside Odysseus, but Eumaeus will not sleep far from the swine: he arms himself with a sword, a cloak, a goatskin, and a spear against dogs and men, and goes to lie down in the open air, beside the swine, under a rock sheltered from the north wind. Odysseus rejoices to see the zeal with which he looks after the goods of his absent master.
Analysis
The book plays with two kinds of truth. The beggar lies about everything he says of himself, but the only promise he makes about Odysseus, that he will return in this same year and take vengeance, is the truth of Odysseus himself, and it is precisely the one Eumaeus rejects. He rejects it out of experience: he has already been deceived by an Aetolian, he has seen wanderers lie to the queen for clothes, and the guest, who had just said he hates those who lie out of poverty, is asking for a cloak with an invented story. The book shows that a well-founded distrust can reject a truth.
The second thread is hospitality, which Eumaeus practices without depending on believing the guest: he welcomes him out of fear of Zeus and out of pity, shares what he has, gives him the loin and his spare cloak, and prays for the master's return in front of the master himself. The house that the suitors devour still stands in the hands of a servant who built the pen on his own initiative and bought Mesaulius with his own means, and the poem sets him in contrast with those who eat without paying. Odysseus, who listens to everything in silence and plans evil against the suitors, sees here what the house still has that is its own.
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