a momentary emotion, but has risen to a
religious principle: "All strangers and the poor are of Zeus;" such is
the vital word of his creed. He is a slave and has not much to share;
"our giving is small but dear to us;" very dear indeed, a mite only,
but it is as good as a world. Well may we call him, with the poet, in
the best sense of the title: "the divine swineherd." We should note too
that the poet addresses Eumaeus in the second person singular, with a
tone of loving familiarity very seldom employed elsewhere in his two
poems. Was there some intimate personal relation figured in this
character which we still seem to feel afar off there in antiquity?

At any rate the picture of the swineherd has the most modern touch to
be found in Homer. It shows the feeling of humanity developed quite to
its supreme fullness; it has modern sentiment, nay, it borders at times
upon modern sentimentality. It recalls the recent novel, which takes
its hero from the lowest class and garnishes him with regal virtues.
Strange old Homer, prophetic again! He seems to have anticipated the
art-forms of all the ages, and to have laid down the lines on which the
literary spirit must move forever. Otherwise, indeed, it could not be;
he has in him the germs of future development; the last novel is
contained in the first, which is the tale of Eumaeus.

In the character of the swineherd, the central point is his loyalty,
adamantine as the rock of his humble home. It is loyalty in a double
sense: to his divine and to his human master, to God and to man, Zeus
and Ulysses. The same trait it is, in a terrestrial and a celestial
manifestation. Both sides of this loyalty are just now under the sorest
trial; there is every temptation to fall away from God and man and
become wholly disloyal. Many have yielded but he will not; in his
solitary abode he keeps piety and patriotism aflame with the breath of
his spirit. Hence he furnishes the rock on which the new order can be
built; without this loyalty in the humble class, no restoration would
be possible, even with the presence of Ulysses.

First we may notice that he is loyal to his human master though he
believes that the latter is dead and cannot return. Still he does not
pass over to the side of the Suitors, who are doing that master and his
house the great wrong. Secondly, the swineherd is loyal to Zeus and the
Divine Order of the World. Hear him: "The Gods love not deeds of
violence; they honor justic