In the next part of our story we're gonna
see Odysseus kick up his social game a couple of notches.
He is going to start to make connections and these connections are gonna be the
crucial next building blocks in his finding his way into his own house.
The first connection we see him make is a sad one with his little dog. Remember, that dog
had been waiting for him to come home, presumably a puppy when Odysseus left, 
and on seeing the man when he returns has such
excitement in his mind that off he goes and falls victim to his own excitement at seeing
his master. We spend time with Eumaeus.
Eumaeus is going to be this crucial, figure that we make contact with.
The swineherd. And his social position, is about as low
as it could go. It could get maybe a little lower.
But Eumaeus has a position in the household, that's a good thing.
The position he has though is one that has no prestige at all.
So we' re entering into society. Odysseus is entering into society at the
very lowest points of his society. He needs to earn his place there first,
then make his way in to the other levels that he aspires to.
We'll see hospitality between Odysseus and Eumaeus the Xenia is very well practiced
here. Eumaeus exercises it in his own humble
style. It is appropriate to what he is able to
offer. He offers pig meat, like we see here, not cow.
So the less expensive kind of meat he offers. Sheepskin for a bed. There's a simple cloak involved.
We're not in the world of fancy, fabulous tapestries and jewel encrusted furniture,
or anything like that. Odysseus is a good guest.
He accepts the gift, they make a connection over their sharing of that
gift, and all is well. Eumaeus is pretty consistently
you'll see in these books, referred to in the second person.
Homer says, "You, Eumaeus, you got yourself then connected with Odysseus."
That'll come up several times. Many people say, "My goodness that's
strange, doesn't happen elsewhere in Homer's epic poetry."
Well there are actually a couple of characters, Eumaeus is prominent among
them, that Homer addresses in the second person.
These are very well trusted people in the inner circle of Odysseus's household.
And there's a kind of intimacy that is suggested by that second person pronoun.
As though Homer wants us to have a special kind of connection
with that person in Odysseus' house. Now, the connection with Eumaeus.
Yeah. That's good.
We've got a guest-host relationship. We're connected.
But Odysseus wants something out of that connection.
And what he wants the most is information. He needs to learn.
In order to learn from Eumaeus, he does it slightly by circuitous kinds of routes. He makes a connection, and he does that mostly via conversation.
He needs to offer Eumaeus some things, he has to tell him about
himself, Odysseus. Doing that, he's laying the ground for the
next thing he wants to do, which is to ask Eumaeus information that's going to be
valuable to him. But Odysseus knows that he needs to kind
of first lay things out and set the stage. He needs to make that social connection.
The two of them are going to go back and forth, Eumaeus and Odysseus,
and it's like they're bringing, going back to our verb of weaving, it's like they're
handing the shuttle back and forth and weaving the fabric of their social
interaction, that connection that they're going to make.
Odysseus, as you know, is an eminent liar and he's gonna go ahead and
lie his pants off in this part A long lie that goes on for many pages. Almost ten of our pages in Fagle's is
Odysseus just cooking up more elaborate and more elaborate pieces to his story.
Long, long, long. At a certain point, we are thinking to ourselves, 
"this is a long digression," but remember, what Odysseus is doing is
trying to make that humane connection, and to do that he needs to give something to
Eumaeus. Turns out it's all a lie but it is a kind of
moment of giving. In that back and forth, 
just kind of leading up to it, leading up to the longer speech,
Eumaeus lets out to Odysseus an important piece of information.
Many strangers come to visit the island and approach Penelope.
She welcomes them in and listens for news of Odysseus, he tells us at page 305 in 
Fagle's translation. So we have a characterization of Penelope
that seems to be pretty good. She brings in strangers, but only so she can hear news of where Odysseus is.
Then Eumaeus asks Odysseus in disguise, "Who are you?"
Which is what Odysseus launches off onto on his part of the story.
And that "Who are you?" is reminiscent of what we've already seen Odysseus
doing with the Phaeacians. Who are you?
Where are you from? Your city?
Your parents? What sort of vessel brought you here?
And why? What's your background?
All of those things come along. So Odysseus to be persuasive - remember our
universal law number two, he knows his audience -
he tells Eumaeus the kind of story that he thinks Eumaeus is going to want to hear.
It's something that dovetails with some aspects of Eumaeus's own background.
Makes some connection there. It also though, carries a lot of aspects
to it that are somehow similar to what the real truth is.
This brings us to our universal law number five. Remember universal laws. True for all human beings or
pretty much most of them. When you tell a lie, you should tell a lie
that's close to the truth. That's universal law number five, when you
tell a lie, you should tell a lie that's close to the truth.
This lets you inhabit the lie as though you really lived it because it's close to
something you knew and if you're ever about to get caught out in something ,
what you say in your lie, as long it's close to what really happened, there'll be
a way for you to fill in whatever gap shows up later.
So Odysseus tells a story that is rife with all kinds of adventurous details about
someone being blown from pillar to post, it involves some engagement in Troy, it
talks about the heroes there. We have lots of detail that
maps on to what Odysseus himself has actually really experienced.
Helps Odysseus inhabit that story persuasively,
make it seem like it's true and gives him a way to avoid getting caught out.
One aspect of this story that he closes with is that Odysseus is on his way.
He tells Eumaeus. Now this is going to be a very good way for
Odysseus to start to test where Eumaeus's loyalties are.
When Odysseus says, "Hey, Odysseus is coming."
He can look right at Eumaeus' eyes to say. "What do you think of that? What do you think of that?"
And he's going to be carefully examining Eumaeus' response to this.
Eumaeus has an overjoyed reaction. "That's great.
Let's, you know, get ready cause here he's, here he's going to come."
That is just the kind of thing Odysseus wanted to hear.
It helps him make this connection and know that he can trust,
start to think that he can trust, Eumaeus. At the end of this long story though, 
that Odysseus tells, Eumaeus has this wonderful reaction to it.
"Oh yeah. Well, you know, there's lots of lies.
People tell us lies all the time, coming through here.
(Page 313.) In fact I just recently heard from someone
who claim they came from this Greek that you talked about, Idomeneus and Crete, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But in the meantime, I'm gonna be a good host.
The reason I'm gonna be nice to you is not because I believe all your lies.
It seems like you're just telling tall tales but instead I'm going to be a good
host and that connection, between the two of them, is sealed on this host-guest
relationship of Xenia. Neither one of them is a fool, 
even Eumaeus, at the low end of the social totem pole, is not a fool. So, the connection between them is just
getting started. It's going to build to new depths, in the
coming books.