Characters
- Argus — Odysseus’s hound; recognizes his master after twenty years; dies
- Eumaeus — swineherd; praises Argus’s past prowess; does not know the beggar is Odysseus
- Lyssa — author of Odysseus’s beggar disguise (context)
- Odysseus — disguised beggar; weeps in secret; cannot acknowledge the dog
- The suitors — cause of Argus’s neglect (unnamed collective)
Places
- Assembly — distant war that took Odysseus from the pup he trained
- Dung-heap before the gates — Argus’s deathbed
- Mycenae — Odysseus’s hall and courtyard
Themes
Narrative
As Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, approaches his own hall with the swineherd Eumaeus, he sees Argus— the hound he reared before sailing to Troy—lying neglected on a pile of dung before the gates. Vermin infest the dog; the suitors’ servants no longer care for him. Argus pricks up his ears, wags his tail, and drops his ears in recognition, but has no strength to rise and come to his master. Odysseus secretly wipes away a tear and asks Eumaeus what fine dog this is that lies in filth; Eumaeus praises the hound’s former speed and scent, then notes that his master died far away and the women neglect him. Odysseus passes into the house without greeting the dog aloud. Argus, having seen his lord in the twentieth year, dies at once.
The episode is the first true recognition on Ithaca: the animal perceives what human eyes, clouded by Athena’s disguise, cannot. Catalogue it apart from the compressed return narrative (04/052) as the Homeric emblem of loyalty and time’s waste under the suitors.