Page:Homer. The Odyssey (IA homerodyssey00collrich).pdf/100

90 erva has spread a mist over it. The goddess herself presently accosts him, in the form of a shepherd, and listens patiently to a story which the hero invents, with his usual readiness, to account for his presence on the island. Then she discovers herself, with a somewhat ironical compliment on the inveterate craftiness which has led him to attempt to impose on the wisest of the immortals. She tells him news of his wife and of his son, and promises him her help against the accursed suitors. She lays her golden wand upon him, and lo! the majestic presence which had touched the maiden fancy of Nausicaa, and won him favour in the eyes of the Phæacian court (to say nothing of Circe and Calypso) has at once given place to the decrepitude of age. The ruddy cheeks grow wrinkled, the bright eyes are dimmed, the flowing locks turned grey, and Ulysses is, to all appearance, an aged beggar, clad in squalid rags. Thus disguised, so that none shall recognise him till his hour comes, he seeks shelter, by direction of the goddess, with his own swineherd Eumæus.

Eumæus is one of the most characteristic personages in the poem, and has given the most trouble to the poet's various critics. He occupies a sort of forester's lodge in the woods, where the vast herds of swine beonging to the absent king are fed by day, and carefully lodged at night. Though he is but a keeper of swine, Homer applies to him continually the epithets "godlike," and "chief of men," which he commonly uses only of territorial lords such as Ulysses and Menelaus. He not only has subordinates in his employ, but an attendant slave, whom he has purchased with his own