Characters
- Eumaeus — swineherd; narrator; once a prince’s son
- Father of Eumaeus — king on Syria in the tale
- Phoenician nurse — Sidonian captive who steals and flees with the child
- Phoenician traders — buyers/abductors who sell Eumaeus
- Telemachus — purchaser who raises Eumaeus on Ithaca
Places
- Mycenae — Laertes’s household; Eumaeus’s adult home
- Sea voyage — death of the nurse; sale of the child
- Sidon — nurse’s original home
- Syria — Eumaeus’s birthplace
Themes
Narrative
In the hut the swineherd Eumaeus tells the beggar (Odysseus) how he came to Ithaca. He was born a prince’s son on the island Syria (Homeric geography—near Ortygia in the tale). A Phoenician woman, his nurse, had been kidnapped from Sidon years before; Phoenician traders seduced her with hope of return, and she stole the child Eumaeus with her when she fled. At sea she died; the traders sold the boy to Laertes, who raised him in the household. So the loyal swineherd is revealed as royal by birth and slave by crime—mirroring Odysseus’s own themes of home, theft, and faithful service.
Catalogue Eumaeus’s origin tale apart from Argus the dog, apart from the bow contest, and apart from Odysseus’s Cretan lying tales.