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Updated: June 12, 2025
Then wise Telemachus answered him: 'My father, it is I that have erred herein and none other is to blame, for I left the well-fitted door of the chamber open, and there has been one of them but too quick to spy it. Go now, goodly Eumaeus, and close the door of the chamber, and mark if it be indeed one of the women that does this mischief, or Melanthius, son of Dolius, as methinks it is.
When morning was come, Ulysses made offer to depart, as if he were not willing to burden his host's hospitality any longer, but said that he would go and try the humanity of the townsfolk, if any there would bestow upon him a bit of bread or a cup of drink. "Alas! poor guest," said Eumaeus, "you know not what you speak. What should so poor and old a man as you do at the suitors' tables?
Finding a stranger with Eumaeus, he treated him courteously, though in the garb of a beggar, and promised him assistance. Eumaeus was sent to the palace to inform Penelope privately of her son's arrival, for caution was necessary with regard to the suitors, who, as Telemachus had learned, were plotting to intercept and kill him.
Then didst thou make answer, swineherd Eumaeus: 'Queen, oh that the Achaeans would hold their peace! so would he charm thy very heart, such things doth he say. For I kept him three nights and three days I held him in the steading, for to me he came first when he fled from the ship, yet he had not made an end of the tale of his affliction.
Late in the day Eumaeus goes home, and Odysseus fights with the braggart beggar Irus. Still later, Penelope appears among the wooers, and receives presents from them. When the wooers have withdrawn, Odysseus and Telemachus remove the weapons from the hall to the armoury.
But do thou, Eumaeus, go to Penelope, and tell her that I am returned; and let no man know thereof, for they plan evil against me; but I will stay here meanwhile." So Eumaeus departed. And when he had gone, Athene came, like a woman tall and fair; but Telemachus saw her not, for it is not given to all to see the immortal gods; but Ulysses saw her, and the dogs saw her, and whimpered for fear.
She stood beside the sleeping Telemachus in Sparta, warning him of the ambush set for him in Ithaca and bidding him to land on a lonely part of the coast whence he was to proceed to the hut of Eumaeus. On his departure from Sparta an omen was interpreted by Helen to mean that Odysseus was not far from home.
Then they cut it up, and Eumaeus began by putting raw pieces from each joint on to some of the fat; these he sprinkled with barley meal, and laid upon the embers; they cut the rest of the meat up small, put the pieces upon the spits and roasted them till they were done; when they had taken them off the spits they threw them on to the dresser in a heap.
Would ye stand on the side of the wooers or of Odysseus? Tell me even as your heart and spirit bid you. So shouldest thou know what my might is, and how my hands follow to obey. In like manner Eumaeus prayed to all the gods that wise Odysseus might return to his own home.
So from a king he became a beggar, as wise Tiresias had predicted to him in the shades. To complete his humiliation, and to prove his obedience by suffering, she next directed him in his beggarly attire to go and present himself to his old herdsman Eumaeus, who had the care of his swine and his cattle, and had been a faithful steward to him all the time of his absence.
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