’This is the bow of Odysseus, my lord who is no more.  Whosoever amongst you who can bend this bow and shoot an arrow from it through the holes in the backs of twelve axes which I shall have set up, him will I wed, and to his house I will go, forsaking the house of my wedlock, this house so filled with treasure and substance, this house which I shall remember in my dreams.’

As she spoke Telemachus took the twelve axes and set them upright in an even line, so that one could shoot an arrow through the hole that was in the back of each axe-head.  Then Eumaeus, the old swineherd, took the bow of Odysseus, and laid it before the wooers.

One of the wooers took up the bow and tried to bend it.  But he could not bend it, and he laid it down at the doorway with the arrow beside it.  The others took up the bow, and warmed it at the fire, and rubbed it with lard to make it more pliable.  As they were doing this, Eumaeus, the swineherd, and Philoetius, the cattleherd, passed out of the hall.

Odysseus followed them into the courtyard.  He laid a hand on each and said, ’Swineherd and cattleherd, I have a word to say to you.  But will you keep it to yourselves, the word I say?  And first, what would you do to help Odysseus if he should return?  Would you stand on his side, or on the side of the wooers?  Answer me now from your hearts.’

Said Philoetius the cattleherd, ’May Zeus fulfil my wish and bring Odysseus back!  Then thou shouldst know on whose side I would stand.’  And Eumaeus said, ’If Odysseus should return I would be on his side, and that with all the strength that is in me.’

When they said this, Odysseus declared himself.  Lifting up his hand to heaven he said, ’I am your master, Odysseus.  After twenty years I have come back to my own country, and I find that of all my servants, by you two alone is my homecoming desired.  If you need see a token that I am indeed Odysseus, look down on my foot.  See there the mark that the wild boar left on me in the days of my youth.’

Straightway he drew the rags from, the scar, and the swineherd and the cattleherd saw it and marked it well.  Knowing that it was indeed Odysseus who stood before them, they cast their arms around him and kissed him on the head and shoulders.  And Odysseus was moved by their tears, and he kissed their heads and their hands.

As they went back to the hall, he told Eumaeus to bring the bow to him as he was bearing it through the hall.  He told him, too, to order Eurycleia, the faithful nurse, to bar the doors of the women’s apartment at the end of the hall, and to bid the women, even if they heard a groaning and a din, not to come into the hall.  And he charged the cattleherd Philoetius to bar the gates of the courtyard.

As he went into the hall, one of the wooers, Eurymachus, was striving to bend the bow.  As he struggled to do so he groaned aloud: 

’Not because I may not marry Penelope do I groan, but because we youths of to-day are shown to be weaklings beside Odysseus, whose bow we can in no way bend.’