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Eumaeus receives the beggar generously, gives him food and a place by the fire, and complains about the suitors.
Odysseus tells a long false tale: he claims to be a Cretan who fought at Troy, was shipwrecked, and was enslaved. Eumaeus believes him and speaks with affection about his absent master. The book contrasts the suitors’ abuse of hospitality with the swineherd’s modest generosity.
Opening lines
But Odysseus went forth from the harbor by the rough path up over the woodland and through the heights to the place where Athena had shewed him that he should find the goodly swineherd, who cared for his substance above all the slaves that goodly Odysseus had gotten. — Homer, Odyssey XIV.1ff., trans. A. T. Murray (Loeb; Perseus Digital Library, CC BY-SA 4.0).
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