HKB
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Often appears with: hospitality and the guest · religious persecution and toleration · wooers’ feasting and waste · visions and omens in wartime return · virtue as enough · the position of women · the customs of foreign peoples · temperance and self-mastery · temperance · swineherding and rural life · servant loyalty to absent master · ritual bathing
Usually: narrative (3) · the stranger's arrival (2) · praise (2) · wonder (2) · reflection (1) · speech or oration (1) · crisis of belief (1) · injustice endured (1) · the test or trial (1) · indignation (1)
“As for me I live out of the way here with the pigs, and never go to the town unless when Penelope sends for me on the arrival of some news about Ulysses.” Homer, The Odyssey · observation
Ulysses in disguise tells Eumaeus his story, but Eumaeus rejects it as lies, insisting he knows the real situation of Odysseus’s absence and describing his own remote life caring for pigs.
went back to their ship. The gods, having hidden me thus easily, then took me to a good man’s door—for it seems that I am not to die yet awhile.” To this you answered, O swineherd Eumaeus, “Poor unhappy stranger, I have found the story of your misfortunes extremely interesting, but that part about Ulysses is not right; and you will never get me to believe it. Why should a man like you go about telling lies in this w…
Nausicaa orders her maidens to feed and bathe Odysseus as a Zeus-sent suppliant, and after he washes and is anointed, she has the girls bring him food while urging kindness.
the people. The Phaeacians hold this city and land, and I am the daughter of Alcinous, great of heart, on whom all the might and force of the Phaeacians depend.” Thus she spake, and called to her maidens of the fair tresses: “Halt, my maidens, whither flee ye at the sight of a man? Ye surely do not take him for an enemy? That mortal breathes not, and never will be born, who shall come with war to the land of the Pha…
Eumaeus argues it is impious to slight a stranger because beggars come from Zeus, explains Odysseus’s lost household, and recounts the wooers’ consumption and their attack on Odysseus’s property.
“May Zeus, O stranger, and all the other deathless gods grant thee thy dearest wish, since thou hast received me heartily!” Then, O swineherd Eumaeus, didst thou answer him, saying: “Guest of mine, it were an impious thing for me to slight a stranger, even if there came a meaner man than thou; for from Zeus are all strangers and beggars; and a little gift from such as we, is dear; for this is the way with thralls, w…
He develops heroism’s social and ethical features—generosity without petty calculation and a mockery of false prudence—then illustrates magnanimous hospitality, temperance, and the greatness of virtue “enough” without comfort.
a sensual prosperity; for every heroic act measures itself by its contempt of some external good. But it finds its own success at last, and then the prudent also extol. Self-trust is the essence of heroism. It is the state of the soul at war, and its ultimate objects are the last defiance of falsehood and wrong, and the power to bear all that can be inflicted by evil agents. It speaks the truth and it is just, gener…
At Susa a Christian fisherman’s wife inquires about Gostanza’s arrival, takes her in, tells her she is near Susa, feeds her, and arranges her employment with a compassionate Saracen lady.
one whether she were at sea or ashore, for, since she had been aboard, she had never once raised, nor, come what might, meant she ever to raise, her head. Now it so chanced, that, when the boat grounded, there was on the shore a poor woman that was in the employ of some fishermen, whose nets she was just taking out of the sunlight. Seeing the boat under full sail, she marvelled how it should be suffered to drive ash…