Then he had his guest into the house, and set meat and drink before him; and Ulysses said, “May Jove and all the other gods requite you for the kind speeches and hospitable usage which you have shewn me!”

Eumaeus made answer, “My poor guest, if one in much worse plight than yourself had arrived here, it were a shame to such scanty means as I have, if I had let him depart without entertaining him to the best of my ability.  Poor men, and such as have no houses of their own, are by Jove himself recommended to our care.  But the cheer which we that are servants to other men have to bestow, is but sorry at most, yet freely and lovingly I give it you.  Indeed there once ruled here a man, whose return the gods have set their faces against, who, if he had been suffered to reign in peace and grow old among us, would have been kind to me and mine.  But he is gone; and for his sake would to God that the whole posterity of Helen might perish with her, since in her quarrel so many worthies have perished.  But such as your fare is, eat it, and be welcome; such lean beasts as are food for poor herdsmen.  The fattest go to feed the voracious stomachs of the queen’s suitors.  Shame on their unworthiness, there is no day in which two or three of the noblest of the herd are not slain to support their feasts and their surfeits.”

Ulysses gave good ear to his words, and as he ate his meat, he even tore it and rent it with his teeth, for mere vexation that his fat cattle should be slain to glut the appetites of those godless suitors.  And he said, “What chief or what ruler is this, that thou commendest so highly, and sayest that he perished at Troy?  I am but a stranger in these parts.  It may be I have heard of some such in my long travels.”

Eumaeus answered, “Old father, never any one of all the strangers that have come to our coast with news of Ulysses being alive, could gain credit with the queen or her son yet.  These travellers, to get raiment or a meal, will not stick to invent any lie.  Truth is not the commodity they deal in.  Never did the queen get any thing of them but lies.  She receives all that come graciously, hears their stories, enquires all she can, but all ends in tears and dissatisfaction.  But in God’s name, old father, if you have got a tale, make the most on’t, it may gain you a cloak or a coat from somebody to keep you warm:  but for him who is the subject of it, dogs and vultures long since have torn him limb from limb, or some great fish at sea has devoured him, or he lieth with no better monument upon his bones than the sea-sand.  But for me past all the race of men were tears created:  for I never shall find so kind a royal master more; not if my father or my mother could come again and visit me from the tomb, would my eyes be so blessed, as they should be with the sight of him again, coming as from the dead.  In his last rest my soul shall love him.  He is not here, nor do I name him as a flatterer, but because I am thankful for his love and care which he had to me a poor man; and if I knew surely that he were past all shores that the sun shines upon, I would invoke him as a deified thing.”