“I had thought,” said he, “that all people knew our land.  It is rocky and barren, to be sure; but well enough:  it feeds a goat or an ox well; it is not wanting neither in wine or in wheat; it has good springs of water, some fair rivers; and wood enough, as you may see:  it is called Ithaca.”

Ulysses was joyed enough to find himself in his own country; but so prudently he carried his joy, that dissembling his true name and quality, he pretended to the shepherd that he was only some foreigner who by stress of weather had put into that port; and framed on the sudden a story to make it plausible, how he had come from Crete in a ship of Phaeacia; when the young shepherd laughing, and taking Ulysses’s hand in both his, said to him:  “He must be cunning, I find, who thinks to over-reach you.  What, cannot you quit your wiles and your subtleties, now that you are in a state of security? must the first word with which you salute your native earth be an untruth? and think you that you are unknown?”

Ulysses looked again; and he saw, not a shepherd, but a beautiful woman, whom he immediately knew to be the goddess Minerva, that in the wars of Troy had frequently vouchsafed her sight to him; and had been with him since in perils, saving him unseen.

“Let not my ignorance offend thee, great Minerva,” he cried, “or move thy displeasure, that in that shape I knew thee not; since the skill of discerning of deities is not attainable by wit or study, but hard to be hit by the wisest of mortals.  To know thee truly through all thy changes is only given to those whom thou art pleased to grace.  To all men thou takest all likenesses.  All men in their wits think that they know thee, and that they have thee.  Thou art wisdom itself.  But a semblance of thee, which is false wisdom, often is taken for thee:  so thy counterfeit view appears to many, but thy true presence to few:  those are they which, loving thee above all, are inspired with light from thee to know thee.  But this I surely know, that all the time the sons of Greece waged war against Troy, I was sundry times graced with thy appearance; but since, I have never been able to set eyes upon thee till now:  but have wandered at my own discretion, to myself a blind guide, erring up and down the world, wanting thee.”

Then Minerva cleared his eyes, and he knew the ground on which he stood to be Ithaca, and that cave to be the same which the people of Ithaca had in former times made sacred to the sea-nymphs, and where he himself had done sacrifices to them a thousand times; and full in his view stood Mount Nerytus with all his woods:  so that now he knew for a certainty that he was arrived in his own country, and with the delight which he felt he could not forbear stooping down and kissing the soil.

CHAPTER VIII

The change from a king to a beggar.—­Eumaeus and the herdsmen.—­Telemachus.