Book 14 · Book Guide
Disguised as a ragged old beggar, Odysseus comes to the hut of Eumaeus, his loyal swineherd, who welcomes the stranger warmly without knowing who he is. Over a humble meal, Eumaeus pours out his grief for his long-lost master and his anger at the suitors devouring the household.
Testing the swineherd, Odysseus tells an elaborate false story about being a Cretan adventurer who has wandered through Egypt and shipwreck, and swears he has heard that Odysseus is alive and will soon return. Burned by lying drifters before, Eumaeus refuses to believe the news, but treats his guest with great kindness anyway, feeding him, sheltering him from the storm, and giving him a cloak for the night. The book paints Eumaeus as the model of loyalty and true hospitality, the opposite of the greedy suitors.
The swineherd is a slave — and the poem treats him as one of its noblest people. Born a prince (he’ll tell that story in Book 15), kidnapped as a child and sold to Laertes, he has spent his life faithfully growing another man’s wealth, and he talks about his lost master with more grief than the man’s own household shows. Homer does something quietly radical here: he gives a slave the same full humanity, backstory, and dignity as any king in the poem — and more honor than most of them earn.
Compare the two feasts running in this poem. In town, more than a hundred rich young men gorge daily on stolen meat. In the hills, a slave kills his best pig for a ragged stranger, apologizing for the poverty of the meal, because — as he puts it — all strangers and beggars come from Zeus. Eumaeus passes the poem’s great test without knowing he’s being tested, and the meal he serves in a hut shames every banquet in the palace.
Asked who he is, Odysseus delivers a complete false life: a Cretan captain’s bastard son, war at Troy, raiding in Egypt, betrayal, slavery, escape — a resume so full of real Mediterranean texture that it breathes. He’ll retell versions of it to Antinous, to Penelope, even to his own father. The lies do real work (a beggar with a plausible story eats better than a mystery man), but Homer’s audience also simply enjoyed watching the master at his craft. The teller of the greatest sea story in literature spends the second half of the poem telling fake ones — each with just enough Odysseus in it to ache.
Odysseus climbs from the harbor to the well-built farmstead Eumaeus has made for his master’s pigs. The watchdogs rush at the disguised beggar, but Eumaeus runs out, drives them off, and brings the stranger inside, ashamed that a guest was nearly harmed.
Eumaeus seats his guest on a bed of brushwood and goat-skin and feeds him young pig, the servant’s fare, explaining that the suitors gorge on the best animals. He grieves for his vanished master and rages at the men wasting his vast wealth, all the while saying that strangers and beggars come from Zeus and must be treated kindly.
When Odysseus asks the master’s name, Eumaeus says no wandering liar’s tales can be trusted, and mourns Odysseus as surely dead. Odysseus solemnly swears that Odysseus will come home this very year and punish those who dishonor his house, but the swineherd refuses the comfort, too often deceived to hope.
Asked who he is, Odysseus spins a long, convincing lie: he is a Cretan, son of a rich man, a born soldier who fought at Troy, led a raid on Egypt that ended in disaster, was passed from captor to captor, and was shipwrecked. He claims that among the Thesprotians he heard Odysseus is alive, gathering treasure, and about to come home.
Eumaeus believes the man’s sufferings but flatly rejects the news of Odysseus, saying he was once fooled by another wanderer with just such a story. He insists he is kind to the stranger out of fear of Zeus and pity, not because he believes a word about his master’s return.
As the herders bring the pigs in for the night, Eumaeus has the best hog killed, makes the proper offerings to the gods, and shares the meat out fairly, honoring his guest with the choicest cut. Odysseus is touched by the swineherd’s goodness.
On the cold, rainy night, Odysseus hints he would like a cloak by telling a clever story of a freezing ambush at Troy, where the real Odysseus once tricked a man out of his cloak for a cold comrade. Taking the hint with good humor, Eumaeus gives the beggar a thick spare cloak to sleep in.
Odysseus and the young herders bed down by the fire, but Eumaeus will not sleep apart from his animals. He arms himself against thieves and wild beasts and goes out to lie among the boars, guarding his master’s property even in his absence, a loyalty that gladdens the watching Odysseus.
A guide to our plain-English translation of Book 14. Read the full book →
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