Odysseus climbed through the wooded hills until he reached the farm of Eumaeus, his swineherd. Eumaeus had built strong pig pens on his own while his master was away. The suitors kept eating the best boars, so he had to send them fat pigs from the herd every day. His dogs rushed at the stranger, but Eumaeus drove them off, welcomed him inside, and cooked two young pigs for his guest.
Inside the hut, Eumaeus talked about his lost master with real grief. He said the suitors were shamelessly eating up Odysseus's wealth and that poor Telemachus had sailed away to search for news. Travelers kept coming with lies about Odysseus's return, so he no longer believed such stories or troubled Penelope with them.
Still disguised as a beggar, Odysseus swore an oath that his master would return that very year. When Eumaeus still would not believe him, Odysseus told a long false story about being a Cretan soldier who had lost everything in wars, voyages, and shipwrecks, and who claimed to have heard that Odysseus was alive in Thesprotia. Eumaeus listened kindly but said he would not be fooled again. He offered food and shelter out of respect for the gods, not because he trusted the story.
That evening they ate roast pork together. Odysseus told another tale about a freezing night at Troy when he got a cloak by tricking a comrade with a fake dream. Eumaeus praised the story but said he could only lend old rags until Telemachus came home. Then Eumaeus wrapped Odysseus in a heavy cloak for the night and went out in the storm with sword and javelin to guard the pigs himself.
Coming Up in Chapter 15
As Eumaeus tends the herd through another long night, Telemachus sails closer to Ithaca with strangers aboard. A fugitive seer named Theoclymenus will join the voyage and read an omen over the island's blood-stained future.
