Then Ulysses said, “Truly, I should have perished in my own halls, like Agamemnon, if you had not warned me.  Help me, therefore, with your wisdom, and stand beside me again and put strength and courage within me as in the days of Troy.  For with you by my side I could fight against three hundred men.”

And Pallas Athene made answer, “I will be with you, Ulysses, when the hour of the conflict is come, and the blood of the suitors who eat up your substance shall be shed at last.  But now I will change you into a poor beggar, so old and so wretched that no one will know you, and in that guise you must go and stay with the herdsman Eumaeus, who tends your swine, until I have brought your son Telemachus from Sparta, where he has gone to seek tidings of you.”

Then she touched him with her magic wand, and the fair flesh withered on his limbs, and the golden locks fell from his head, and he was changed into an old man.  His skin was shriveled and his bright eyes dimmed, and for his covering she gave him a tattered wrap, begrimed with smoke, and a worn deerskin on his shoulder, and a wallet and a staff in his hand.

Then she vanished, and left him to take his way alone across the hills.

ULYSSES AT THE HOUSE OF THE SWINEHERD

By F. S. Marvin, R. J. C. Mayor, and F. M. Stowell

Ulysses went up along the rough mountain path, through the forest and over the hills, till he came to the house where his faithful steward lived.  It stood in an open space, and there was a large courtyard in front with a wall of heavy stones and hawthorn boughs and a stout oak palisade.  Inside the yard there were twelve sties for the pigs, and the swineherd kept four watch-dogs to guard the place, great beasts and fierce as wolves, that he had reared himself.  Ulysses found him at home, sitting in the porch alone, and cutting himself a pair of sandals from a brown oxhide.

The dogs caught sight of the king as soon as he came up and flew at him, barking, but he had the wit to let go his staff and sit down at once on the ground.  Still it might have gone hard with him there in front of his own servant’s house had not Eumaeus rushed out of the porch, dropping the leather in his haste, and scolded the dogs, driving them off with a volley of stones.

Then he said to Ulysses, “A little more, old man, and the dogs would have torn you in pieces, and disgraced me forever.  And I have my full share of trouble as it is, for I have lost the best master in all the world and must sit here to mourn for him and fatten his swine for other men, while he is wandering somewhere in foreign lands, hungry and thirsty perhaps, if he is still alive at all.  But now come in yourself, and let me give you food and drink and tell me your own tale.”