multitude, and he single, he began to despond, and he said, "I shall die
an ill death like Agamemnon; in the threshold of my own house I shall
perish, like that unfortunate monarch, slain by some one of my wife's
suitors." But then again calling to mind his ancient courage, he secretly
wished that Minerva would but breathe such a spirit into his bosom as she
inflamed him with in the hour of Troy's destruction, that he might
encounter with three hundred of those impudent suitors at once, and strew
the pavements of his beautiful palace with their bloods and brains.

And Minerva knew his thoughts, and she said, "I will be strongly with
thee, if thou fail not to do thy part. And for a sign between us that I
will perform my promise and for a token on thy part of obedience, I must
change thee, that thy person may not be known of men."

Then Ulysses bowed his head to receive the divine impression, and Minerva
by her great power changed his person so that it might not be known. She
changed him to appearance into a very old man, yet such a one as by his
limbs and gait seemed to have been some considerable person in his time,
and to retain yet some remains of his once prodigious strength. Also,
instead of those rich robes in which king Alcinous had clothed him, she
threw over his limbs such old and tattered rags as wandering beggars
usually wear. A staff supported his steps, and a scrip hung to his back,
such as travelling mendicants used to hold the scraps which are given to
them at rich men's doors. So from a king he became a beggar, as wise
Tiresias had predicted to him in the shades.

To complete his humiliation, and to prove his obedience by suffering, she
next directed him in his beggarly attire to go and present himself to his
old herdsman Eumaeus, who had the care of his swine and his cattle, and
had been a faithful steward to him all the time of his absence. Then