Page 235 - the-odyssey

‘My friend,’ replied Ulysses, ‘you are very positive, and
very hard of belief about your master’s coming home again,
nevertheless I will not merely say, but will swear, that he is
coming. Do not give me anything for my news till he has ac-
tually come, you may then give me a shirt and cloak of good
wear if you will. I am in great want, but I will not take any-
thing at all till then, for I hate a man, even as I hate hell fire,
who lets his poverty tempt him into lying. I swear by king
Jove, by the rites of hospitality, and by that hearth of Ulysses
to which I have now come, that all will surely happen as I
have said it will. Ulysses will return in this self same year;
with the end of this moon and the beginning of the next he
will be here to do vengeance on all those who are ill treating
his wife and son.’
To this you answered, O swineherd Eumaeus, ‘Old man,
you will neither get paid for bringing good news, nor will
Ulysses ever come home; drink your wine in peace, and let
us talk about something else. Do not keep on reminding me
of all this; it always pains me when any one speaks about
my honoured master. As for your oath we will let it alone,
but I only wish he may come, as do Penelope, his old fa-
ther Laertes, and his son Telemachus. I am terribly unhappy
too about this same boy of his; he was running up fast into
manhood, and bade fare to be no worse man, face and fig-
ure, than his father, but some one, either god or man, has
been unsettling his mind, so he has gone off to Pylos to try
and get news of his father, and the suitors are lying in wait
for him as he is coming home, in the hope of leaving the
house of Arceisius without a name in Ithaca. But let us say

The Odyssey