"Be not over anxious for him," answered Athene; "I myself sent him on that quest, that he might win a good name among men. And now he sits secure in the wealthy house of Menelaus, dwelling in luxury and honour. The wooers have laid an ambush against his return; but all their malice shall be brought to naught."
It was now time for Odysseus to start on his way to the swineherd. But first he had to submit to a strange transformation. Athene touched him with a rod which she was carrying, and instantly the flesh shrivelled on his limbs, the clustering locks fell away from his head, and the keen, piercing glance of his eyes was quenched. He who a moment before had been a mighty man in his prime was now become a wrinkled, aged beggar, clad in miserable, grimy rags, with a staff, and a tattered scrip, hanging by a cord from his shoulder. For a cloak she gave him an old deer's hide, from which all the hair was gone. Thus totally disguised, he parted from the goddess, and started inland, following a rugged mountain path, while Athene went to summon Telemachus from Sparta.
21. Shakespeare, "Tempest." [(return)]
Odysseus and Eumæus
I
The office of swineherd was a position of great trust and importance among the patriarchal chieftains of Homeric Greece. The principal diet was the flesh of swine and oxen, and these animals formed the chief part of their wealth. Eumæus, the chief swineherd of Odysseus, lived apart in a lonely place among the hills, where he had enclosed a wide space of ground with a stone fence defended at the top with brambles, and in front by a palisade of oak. Within the fence were twelve styes, and in each stye were fifty sows with their young. The boars had their quarters outside the enclosure, and their number had been greatly diminished by the constant demand for hog's flesh among the suitors. Still, they reached the formidable total of three hundred and fifty—a noisy and ravenous multitude.
It was no light task to provide shelter for nearly a thousand swine, with their young; yet Eumæus had undertaken this duty during his master's long absence, without the knowledge of Laertes or Penelope. And here he was sitting, on this sunny morning, cutting up a well-tanned ox-hide to make straps for sandals, while four dogs, large and fierce as wolves, prowled near at hand. Three of his helpers were gone with the swine to their feeding ground, and the fourth had been sent to the town with a fat hog for the wooers.
Suddenly the dogs rushed forward, baying furiously, and an old man in tattered raiment appeared at the gate of the courtyard. It would have gone hard with the stranger if Eumæus had not promptly come to the rescue, and driven the dogs off with a volley of stones. "Old man," said Eumæus, as the dogs slunk away yelping, "it was well that I was near, or thou hadst surely been torn to pieces, and brought shame on me. I have trouble enough without that. Here I sit, fattening my master's swine for other men's tables, while he wanders, perchance, among strangers, in poverty and want. But come into my hut, and when thou hast comforted thy soul with meat and wine thou shalt tell thy tale of sorrow."