To this you answered, O swineherd
Eumaios, "Eat, my good fellow, and enjoy your supper, such as it is.
A god grants this, and withholds that, just as he thinks right, for
he can do whatever he chooses."
As he spoke he cut off the first
piece and offered it as a burnt sacrifice to the immortal gods; then
he made them a drink-offering, put the cup in the hands of Odysseus,
and sat down to his own portion. Mesaulios brought them their bread;
the swineherd had bought this man on his own account from among the
Taphians during his master's absence, and had paid for him with
his own wealth without saying anything either to his mistress or
Laertes. They then laid their hands upon the good things that were
before them, and when they had had enough to eat and drink, Mesaulios
took away what was left of the bread, and they all went to bed after
having made a hearty supper.
Now the night came on stormy and
very dark, for there was no moon. It poured without ceasing, and the
wind blew strong from the West, which is a wet quarter, so Odysseus
thought he would see whether Eumaios, in the excellent care he took
of him, would take off his own cloak and give it him, or make one of
his men give him one. "Listen to me," said he, "Eumaios and the rest
of you; when I have said a prayer I will tell you something. It is
the wine that makes me talk in this way; wine will make even a wise
man fall to singing; it will make him chuckle and dance and say many
a word that he had better leave unspoken; still, as I have begun, I
will go on. Would that I were still young and strong
[biê] as when we got up an ambuscade before
Troy. Menelaos and Odysseus were the leaders, but I was in command
also, for the other two would have it so. When we had come up to the
wall of the city we crouched down beneath our armor and lay there
under cover of the reeds and thick brush-wood that grew about the
swamp. It came on to freeze with a North wind blowing; the snow fell
small and fine like hoar frost, and our shields were coated thick
with rime. The others had all got cloaks and shirts, and slept
comfortably enough with their shields about their shoulders, but I
had carelessly left my cloak behind me, not thinking that I should be
too cold, and had gone off in nothing but my shirt and shield. When
the night was two-thirds through and the stars had shifted their
places, I nudged Odysseus who was close to me with my elbow, and he
at once gave me his ear.
"‘Odysseus,’ said I,
‘this cold will be the death of me, for I have no cloak; some
daimôn fooled me into setting off with nothing on but my
shirt, and I do not know what to do.’
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.