"The gods, they must have blocked his journey home.
He’d have treated me well, he would, with a house,
a plot of land and a wife you’d gladly prize.
Goods that a kind lord will give a household hand
who labors for him, hard, whose work the gods have sped,
just as they speed the work I labor at all day.
My master, I tell you, would have repaid me well
if he’d grown old right here. But now he’s dead."
– Homer
The Odyssey, Book 14, lines 71-78. Eumaeus believes that his master would have generously rewarded his loyalty had the gods not blocked his journey home. This passage represents a literary device known as irony. For Odysseus’ journey home was not blocked, he is sitting in Eumaeus’ home disguised as a beggar.