Character
Eumaeus
Odysseus's swineherd · born a king's son, stolen and sold as a child
Odysseus's swineherd, and the moral centre of the poem's second half. Born a king's son on a distant island and stolen away by traders as a child, he was bought by Odysseus's father and has run the pig farm honestly for twenty years while the suitors eat the herd. He takes in a filthy stranger he does not recognise, kills a fatted boar for his supper, and later stands and fights beside him in the hall.
Homer addresses him directly — 'then you answered him, Eumaeus' — a mark of intimacy the poem gives to almost no one else.