“DEAR SON, HAVE YOU COME HOME AT LAST? WHEN YOU SAILED AWAY TO PYLOS, I NEVER THOUGHT TO SEE YOU AGAIN. BUT COME IN AND LET ME FEAST MY EYES UPON YOU; FOR YOU DO NOT OFTEN VISIT US, BUT ARE KEPT AT HOME IN THE TOWN, WATCHING THAT CROWD OF RUINOUS SUITORS.” AND TELEMACHUS ANSWERED, “GLADLY, GOOD FATHER; I HAVE COME TO SEE YOU, AND TO HEAR TIDINGS OF MY MOTHER.” THEN THE SWINEHERD TOLD HIM THAT HIS MOTHER STILL WAITED PATIENTLY AT HOME.
Then Telemachus went into the house, and as he came up Ulysses rose to give him his seat, but he would not take it, and said, “Keep your seat, stranger, this man shall make up another for me.” So Ulysses sat down again, and the swineherd made a seat for Telemachus of the green brushwood and put a fleece upon it. Then he set food before them, and when they had eaten, Telemachus asked who the stranger was, and how he had come to Ithaca. And Eumæus told him Ulysses’s own story and begged him to protect the wanderer. But Telemachus thought of the suitors and did not wish to take him to the palace.
“I will give him a coat and a vest,” he said, “and shoes for his feet, and a two-edged sword, and I will send him on his way. But I cannot take him into the house, where the suitors would mock at him and use him ill. One man cannot restrain them, and he so young as I.”
Then Ulysses said, “Sir, if I may speak, I would say foul wrong is done you in your house, and my heart burns at the thought. Do your people hate you, or will your brothers give you no support? Would that I were as young as you are, and were Ulysses’s son or Ulysses himself. I would go to the palace and fall upon all the throng, and die there, one man against a hundred, sooner than see the shameful deeds that are done in that glorious house.”
And Telemachus answered, “Hear me, stranger, and I will tell you all. My people do not hate me, and I have no quarrel with them. But I have no brothers to stand by me, for Zeus has never given more than one son to each generation of our line. And there are many foemen in the house, all the princes of the islands, and they too woo my mother and threaten my life, and I cannot see how it will end.”
Then he said to Eumæus, “Go up to the house, old father, as quickly as you can, and tell my mother that I am come back safe from Pylos, and I will wait for you here.”
And Eumæus answered, “I hear, master, and understand. But shall I not go to Laertes on my way and tell him too? For since you set sail for Pylos, they say he has not eaten or drunk or gone about his work, but sits in his house sorrowing and wasting away with grief.”
But Telemachus bade him go straight to the palace and return at once, and let the queen send word to Laertes by one of the maids. So Eumæus went forth, and when Athene saw him go, she drew near, and came and stood by the gateway and showed herself to Ulysses, a tall and beautiful woman, with wisdom in her look. The dogs saw her too and were afraid, and shrank away whining into the corner of the yard, but Telemachus could not see her. Then the goddess nodded to Ulysses, and he went out and stood before her, and she said, “Noble Ulysses, now is the time to reveal yourself to your son, and go forth with him to the town, with death and doom for the suitors. I shall be near you in the battle and eager to fight.”
Then she touched him with her golden wand and gave him his beauty and stature once more, and his old bronzed color came back and his beard grew thick and his garments shone bright again: and so she sent him to the hut. And when Telemachus saw him, he marveled and turned away his eyes, for he thought it must be a god.