1 "I will tell you then truth," replied her son.
2 "I will tell you the truth, my son," replied Ulysses.
3 "I will tell you the truth, my son," answered Euryclea.
4 To you two, therefore, will I unfold the truth as it shall be.
5 To this you answered, O swineherd Eumaeus, "My son, I will tell you the real truth."
6 And I said, 'In truth Jove has hated the house of Atreus from first to last in the matter of their women's counsels.'
7 He thought he was going to avenge the murder of his son, whereas in truth he was never to return, but was himself to perish in his attempt.
8 Then the dear old nurse Euryclea said, "You may kill me, Madam, or let me live on in your house, whichever you please, but I will tell you the real truth."
9 And Ulysses answered, "In good truth, goddess, it seems I should have come to much the same bad end in my own house as Agamemnon did, if you had not given me such timely information."
10 Ulysses was glad at finding himself, as Minerva told him, in his own country, and he began to answer, but he did not speak the truth, and made up a lying story in the instinctive wiliness of his heart.
11 Ulysses sat by the fire, but ere long he turned away from the light, for it occurred to him that when the old woman had hold of his leg she would recognise a certain scar which it bore, whereon the whole truth would come out.
12 Friend," said he, "now that I find you sacrificing in this place, I beseech you by your sacrifices themselves, and by the god to whom you make them, I pray you also by your own head and by those of your followers tell me the truth and nothing but the truth.
13 In good truth the chiefs and rulers of the Phaeacians have not been dealing fairly by me, and have left me in the wrong country; they said they would take me back to Ithaca and they have not done so: may Jove the protector of suppliants chastise them, for he watches over everybody and punishes those who do wrong.
14 Nevertheless, tramps in want of a lodging keep coming with their mouths full of lies, and not a word of truth; every one who finds his way to Ithaca goes to my mistress and tells her falsehoods, whereon she takes them in, makes much of them, and asks them all manner of questions, crying all the time as women will when they have lost their husbands.