“I will not fail thee, of that be sure,” replied Athene, “when the time comes to enter on that task.  They shall pay full dear for thy substance which they devour, even with their very blood and brains, which shall be shed upon the ground like water.  But thou must not appear among them in this fashion.  I will give thee a disguise which none can penetrate, not even Penelope herself.  And when thou leavest this place, go first to the swineherd, who abides ever by his charge, faithful to thee and to thy house.  Thou wilt find him sitting by the swine on their feeding ground, near Raven’s Rock and the fountain Arethusa, where there is abundance of acorns and fair water.  Remain there and inquire of him concerning all things, while I go to Sparta to summon Telemachus, thy son, who went to visit Menelaus to ask news of thee.”

“Why didst thou permit him to go on a vain errand?” asked Odysseus.  “Was it that he might suffer as I have suffered, in wandering o’er the deep, while others devour his living?”

“Be not over anxious for him,” answered Athene; “I myself sent him on that quest, that he might win a good name among men.  And now he sits secure in the wealthy house of Menelaus, dwelling in luxury and honour.  The wooers have laid an ambush against his return; but all their malice shall be brought to naught.”

It was now time for Odysseus to start on his way to the swineherd.  But first he had to submit to a strange transformation.  Athene touched him with a rod which she was carrying, and instantly the flesh shrivelled on his limbs, the clustering locks fell away from his head, and the keen, piercing glance of his eyes was quenched.  He who a moment before had been a mighty man in his prime was now become a wrinkled, aged beggar, clad in miserable, grimy rags, with a staff, and a tattered scrip, hanging by a cord from his shoulder.  For a cloak she gave him an old deer’s hide, from which all the hair was gone.  Thus totally disguised, he parted from the goddess, and started inland, following a rugged mountain path, while Athene went to summon Telemachus from Sparta.

Odysseus and Eumaeus

I

The office of swineherd was a position of great trust and importance among the patriarchal chieftains of Homeric Greece.  The principal diet was the flesh of swine and oxen, and these animals formed the chief part of their wealth.  Eumaeus, the chief swineherd of Odysseus, lived apart in a lonely place among the hills, where he had enclosed a wide space of ground with a stone fence defended at the top with brambles, and in front by a palisade of oak.  Within the fence were twelve styes, and in each stye were fifty sows with their young.  The boars had their quarters outside the enclosure, and their number had been greatly diminished by the constant demand for hog’s flesh among the suitors.  Still, they reached the formidable total of three hundred and fifty—­a noisy and ravenous multitude.