"Never another master kind as he!
I’ll never find one – no matter where I go,
not even if I went back to mother and father,
the house where I was born and my parents reared me once.
Ah, but much as I grieve for them, much as I long
to lay my eyes on them, set foot on the old soil,
it’s longing for him, him that wrings my heart –
Odysseus, lost and gone!
I can scarcely bear to say his name aloud,
so deeply he loved me, cared for me, so deeply.
Worlds away as he is, I call him Master, Brother!"
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 14, lines 161-172. Eumaeus talks about how much he misses his king, portraying him as kind and loving. Despite the fact that he is "lost and gone," the loyal Eumaeus still considers him to be his lord and master.