HKB
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Often appears with: wooers’ feasting and waste · property, inheritance, and title · household wealth and livestock tribute · hospitality to strangers · hospitality and the guest · divine origin of beggars · custom and the manners of a people
Usually: speech or oration (1) · injustice endured (1) · the stranger's arrival (1) · indignation (1) · reverence (1)
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…