Odysseus climbs the rough path to the hut of Eumaeus, the swineherd, who lives on the edge of the estate. He has built a large stone-walled yard with twelve sties, each holding fifty sows, while the boars sleep outside, and their numbers are shrinking because Eumaeus must send the best hogs to the suitors' feasts. As Odysseus approaches, Eumaeus's four savage dogs rush at him. Odysseus wisely sits down and drops his staff, but he might still have been hurt if Eumaeus had not run out and driven them off with stones. The swineherd welcomes the beggar into his hut, makes him a seat of brushwood covered with a goatskin, and explains that strangers and beggars come from Zeus.
Eumaeus kills two young pigs, roasts them, and serves the meat with wine. As they eat, he speaks sadly of his master, whom he believes to be dead, and of the shameless suitors who devour Odysseus's herds and have no fear of the gods. He describes the enormous wealth of his master, whose flocks and herds are spread over Ithaca and the mainland. Odysseus asks the master's name, saying he might have seen him in his travels. Eumaeus replies that every vagabond who comes to Ithaca tells Penelope a story about Odysseus in exchange for a cloak or a meal, and that his master's bones must lie at the bottom of the sea or be rotting on land.
Odysseus, still in disguise, swears a solemn oath that Odysseus will return before the year is out and take revenge on the suitors. He even offers a wager: if he is proved wrong, Eumaeus may throw him off a cliff. The swineherd refuses the bet, saying it would hardly do his reputation any good to kill a guest after feeding him, and changes the subject to his worries about Telemachus, who has gone to Pylos while the suitors plot to ambush him.
Asked about his own life, Odysseus tells another long and detailed false story. He claims to be the son of a wealthy Cretan, Castor, son of Hylax, by a slave woman. Cheated by his half-brothers of his inheritance, he married into a rich family through his courage and became a leader of raids. He fought at Troy with Idomeneus. Later he led a raid on Egypt, where his men ran wild and were killed or enslaved, though he himself was spared by the Egyptian king. After seven years he was tricked by a Phoenician merchant who planned to sell him as a slave, but Zeus wrecked their ship and he drifted to Thesprotia. There, he says, King Pheidon told him that Odysseus had gone to Dodona to consult the oracle of Zeus about how to return home, and showed him Odysseus's stored treasures. Finally sailors sent to take him to Dulichium tried to sell him into slavery, but he escaped when they landed on Ithaca.
Eumaeus is moved by the story but says he cannot believe the part about Odysseus; he has been fooled before by an Aetolian who claimed Odysseus would return. When the other herdsmen return, Eumaeus sacrifices a five-year-old hog in honor of his guest and sets aside a portion for Hermes and the nymphs. The night turns cold and rainy, so Odysseus tells another tale to test his host: once, at Troy, he lay in an ambush with Odysseus and Menelaus without a cloak and was freezing, until Odysseus cleverly sent a man running back to the ships with a message so that the story-teller could borrow his cloak. Eumaeus understands the hint and gives the beggar a bed by the fire and a thick cloak. Then he goes outside, armed and wrapped in a heavy cloak, to sleep beside the boars and guard them through the night. Odysseus is pleased to see how carefully his servant protects his property.
