Odysseus and Eumaeus — The swineherd's hospitality

Book 14 of The Odyssey by Homer

So Odysseus went up from the harbour by the rough track through the woodland and over the crest of the hill, the way that Athene had shown him, to the dwelling of the goodly swineherd, who above all the servants that Odysseus had was careful of the substance of his lord. He found the swineherd sitting in the forecourt of his lodge, where his courtyard was built high in a place with a wide view, a great court and a fair, with a free range round it. This the swineherd had built by himself for the swine of his absent lord, without the help of his mistress or the old man Laertes, building it with stones of the field and coping it with a fence of wild pear. Without he had driven stakes on this side and on that, set thick and close, made of the dark heart of the oak. Within the courtyard he had made twelve sties close to one another, where his swine were lodged, and in each fifty wallowing swine were penned. The boars lay outside, and these were far fewer, for the suitors kept thinning them by their feasting. Eumaeus was ever sending the best of all the fatted hogs, yet there were three hundred and sixty still. Beside them always slept four dogs, as fierce as wild beasts, which the swineherd had bred.

He himself was now fitting sandals to his feet, cutting a good piece of ox-hide, and the other herdsmen had gone forth this way and that with the droves of swine, three of them — but the fourth he had sent to the city to bring a boar to the proud suitors perforce, that they might sacrifice it and satisfy their appetite with flesh. Suddenly the baying dogs caught sight of Odysseus, and they ran at him yelping, but Odysseus with his cunning sat down, and the staff fell from his hand. Then even in his own farmstead he would have suffered a grievous hurt, but the swineherd with swift feet came after them and rushed through the gateway, and the hide fell from his hand. He shouted at the dogs and drove them this way and that with a shower of stones, and spoke to his lord: "Old man, the dogs were like to have torn thee to pieces in a moment, and on me thou wouldest have shed reproach. Aye, the gods have given me other griefs and sorrows enough. Here I sit mourning and sorrowing for my godlike lord, and tend his fat swine for others to eat, while he, craving for food, wanders over the land and the city of men of strange speech, if haply he yet lives and sees the light of the sun. But come, let us go to the lodge, old man, that when thou hast satisfied thy heart with food and wine thou too mayest tell thy tale and declare whence thou art and how many woes thou hast endured."

Therewith the goodly swineherd led him to the lodge and bade him sit down. He strewed thick brushwood below and spread thereon the skin of a shaggy wild goat, his own great sleeping-skin. Odysseus rejoiced that he had given him such welcome and spoke: "May Zeus and all the other immortal gods grant thee thy dearest wish, stranger, since thou hast received me heartily." And thou didst answer, swineherd Eumaeus: "Stranger, it were an impious thing for me to slight a stranger, even if one meaner than thou should come, for all strangers and beggars are from Zeus, and a gift from such as us is small but welcome. This is the way with thralls, who are ever in fear when young lords bear the mastery. For the gods have stayed the homecoming of him who would have loved me well and given me goods of my own, a house and a plot of ground and a wife sought of many wooers, such things as a kind lord gives to his man who has laboured much for him and whose work the god has prospered — even as he prospers this work of mine. Therefore would my lord have rewarded me greatly had he grown old at home. But he has perished — would that the stock of Helen had perished utterly, since she loosened the knees of many a man. For my master too went to Ilion of the goodly steeds, to fight the Trojans for the honour of Agamemnon."