Calypso's offer of immortality. After smiling at Odysseus' pretence
that he was a Cretan Athena counselled him how to slay the suitors and
hurried to fetch Telemachus from Sparta. The poet tells why Athena
loved Odysseus more than all others.

"Crafty would he be and a cunning trickster who surpassed thee in
wiles, though it were a god who challenged thee. We know craft
enough, both of us, for thou art by far the best of mortals in speech
and counsel and I among the gods am famed for devices and cunning."

Transformed by her into an old beggar, Odysseus went to the hut of his
faithful old swineherd Eumaeus; the dogs set upon him, but Eumaeus
scared them away and welcomed him to his dwelling. In spite of
Odysseus' assurance that the master would return Eumaeus, who had been
often deceived by similar words, refused to believe. Feigning himself
to be a Cretan, Odysseus saw for himself that the old servant's
loyalty was steadfast; a deft touch brings out his care for his
master's substance:

"laying a bed for Odysseus before the fire, he went out and slept
among the dogs in a cave beneath the breath of the winds."

By the intervention of Athena the two leading characters are brought
together. She stood beside the sleeping Telemachus in Sparta, warning
him of the ambush set for him in Ithaca and bidding him to land on a
lonely part of the coast whence he was to proceed to the hut of
Eumaeus. On his departure from Sparta an omen was interpreted by Helen
to mean that Odysseus was not far from home. As he was on the point of
leaving Pylos on the morrow a bard named Theoclymenus appealed to him
for protection, for he had slain a man and was a fugitive from