at
Goddess, Pallas Athene. 'How clever you are,' she said; 'yet you did not
know me, who helped you in Troyland. But much trouble lies before you,
and you must not let man or woman know who you really are, your enemies
are so many and powerful.'

'You never helped me in my dangers on the sea,' said Ulysses, 'and now
do you make mock of me, or is this really mine own country?'

'I had no mind,' said the Goddess, 'to quarrel with my brother the Sea
God, who had a feud against you for the blinding of his son, the
Cyclops. But come, you shall see this is really Ithaca,' and she
scattered the white mist, and Ulysses saw and knew the pleasant cave of
the Naiads, and the forests on the side of the mountain called Neriton.
So he knelt down and kissed the dear earth of his own country, and
prayed to the Naiads of the cave. Then the Goddess helped him to hide
all his gold, and bronze, and other presents in a secret place in the
cavern; and she taught him how, being lonely as he was, he might destroy
the proud wooers of his wife, who would certainly desire to take his
life.

The Goddess began by disguising Ulysses, so that his skin seemed
wrinkled, and his hair thin, and his eyes dull, and she gave him dirty
old wraps for clothes, and over all a great bald skin of a stag, like
that which he wore when he stole into Troy disguised as a beggar. She
gave him a staff, too, and a wallet to hold scraps of broken food. There
was not a man or a woman that knew Ulysses in this disguise. Next, the
Goddess bade him go across the island to his own swineherd, who remained
faithful to him, and to stay there among the swine till she brought home
Telemachus, who was visiting Helen and Menelaus in Lacedaemon. She fled
away to Lacedaemon, and Ulysses climbed the hills that lay between the
cavern and the farm where the swineherd lived.

When Ulysses reached the farmhouse, the swineherd, Eumaeus, was sitting
alone in front of his door, making himself a pair of brogues out of the
skin of an ox. He was a very honest man, and, though he was a slave, he
was the son of a prince in his own country. When he was a little child
some Phoenicians came in their ship to his father's house and made
friends with his nurse, who was a Phoenician woman. One of them, who
made love to her, asked her who she was, and she said that her father
was a rich man in Sidon, but that pirates had carried her away and sold
her to her master. The Phoenicians promised to bring her