th lard to make it more pliable. As they were doing this, Eumaeus, the
swineherd, and Philoetius, the cattleherd, passed out of the hall.

Odysseus followed them into the courtyard. He laid a hand on each and
said, 'Swineherd and cattleherd, I have a word to say to you. But will
you keep it to yourselves, the word I say? And first, what would you do
to help Odysseus if he should return? Would you stand on his side, or on
the side of the wooers? Answer me now from your hearts.'

Said Philoetius the cattleherd, 'May Zeus fulfil my wish and bring
Odysseus back! Then thou shouldst know on whose side I would stand.'
And Eumaeus said, 'If Odysseus should return I would be on his side, and
that with all the strength that is in me.'

When they said this, Odysseus declared himself. Lifting up his hand to
heaven he said, 'I am your master, Odysseus. After twenty years I have
come back to my own country, and I find that of all my servants, by you
two alone is my homecoming desired. If you need see a token that I am
indeed Odysseus, look down on my foot. See there the mark that the wild
boar left on me in the days of my youth.'

Straightway he drew the rags from, the scar, and the swineherd and the
cattleherd saw it and marked it well. Knowing that it was indeed
Odysseus who stood before them, they cast their arms around him and
kissed him on the head and shoulders. And Odysseus was moved by their
tears, and he kissed their heads and their hands.

As they went back to the hall, he told Eumaeus to bring the bow to him as
he was bearing it through the hall. He told him, too, to order
Eurycleia, the faithful nurse, to bar the doors of the women's apartment
at the end of the hall, and to bid the women, even if they heard a
groaning and a din, not to come into the hall. And he charged the
cattleherd Philoetius to bar the gates of the courtyard.

As he went into the hall, one of the wooers, Eurymachus, was striving to
bend the bow. As he struggled to do so he groaned aloud:

'Not because I may not marry Penelope do I groan, but because we youths
of to-day are shown to be weaklings beside Odysseus, whose bow we can in
no way bend.'

Then Antinous, the proudest of the wooers, made answer and said, 'Why
should we strive to bend the bow to-day? Nay, lay the bow aside,
Eurymachus, and let the wine-bearers pour us out a cupful each. In the
morning let us make sacrifice to the Archer-god, and pray that the bow
be fitted to some of our h