“Take and give this to the stranger, and bid him go about and beg himself of all the wooers in their turn, for shame is an ill mate of a needy man.”
So he spake, and the swineherd went when he heard that saying, and stood by and spake to him winged words:
“Stranger, Telemachus gives thee these and bids thee go about and beg of all the wooers in their turn, for, he says, ‘shame ill becomes a beggar man.’”
Then Odysseus of many counsels answered him and said: “King Zeus, grant me that Telemachus may be happy among men, and may he have all his heart’s desire!”
Therewith he took the gift in both hands, and set it there before his feet on his unsightly scrip. Then he ate meat so long as the minstrel was singing in the halls. When he had done supper, and the divine minstrel was ending his song, then the wooers raised a clamour through the halls; but Athene stood by Odysseus, son of Laertes, and moved him to go gathering morsels of bread among the wooers, and learn which were righteous and which unjust. Yet not even so was she fated to redeem one man of them from an evil doom. So he set out, beginning on the right, to ask of each man, stretching out his hand on every side, as though he were a beggar from of old. And they in pity gave him somewhat, and were amazed at the man, asking one another who he was and whence he came?
Then Melanthius, the goatherd, spake among them:
“Listen, ye wooers of the renowned queen, concerning this stranger, for verily I have seen him before. The swineherd truly was his guide hither, but of him I have no certain knowledge, whence he avows him to be born.”
So spake he, but Antinous rebuked the swineherd, saying: “Oh notorious swineherd, wherefore, I pray thee, didst thou bring this man to the city? Have we not vagrants enough besides, plaguy beggars, kill-joys of the feast? Dost thou count it a light thing that they assemble here and devour the living of thy master, but thou must needs[31] call in this man too?”
[31] πόθι can hardly have a local meaning here. If retained, it must be nearly equivalent to πού, “it seems,” with a touch of irony. Cf. i. 348. The v. 1. προτὶ = πρὸς is a simpler reading, but by no means certain.
Then didst thou make answer, swineherd Eumaeus: “Antinous, no fair words are these of thine, noble though thou art. For who ever himself seeks out and bids to the feast a stranger from afar, save only one of those that are craftsmen of the people, a prophet or a healer of ills, or a shipwright or even a godlike minstrel, who can delight all with his song? Nay, these are the men that are welcome over all the wide earth. But none would call a beggar to the banquet, to waste his substance. But thou art ever hard above all the other wooers to the servants of Odysseus, and, beyond all, to me; but behold, I care not, so long as my mistress, the constant Penelope, lives in the halls and godlike Telemachus.”