What It Is
Argos is the dog that Odysseus raised before leaving for Troy. The young men used to take him hunting wild goats, deer, and hares. Now his master has been gone for twenty years, and the dog lies on the dung of the mules and oxen, at the palace door, covered with ticks.
Where It Appears
Argos appears only once, in Book XVII. Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, and Eumaeus reach the gate and hear the lyre of Phemius. The narrator introduces the dog:
δὴ τότε κεῖτʼ ἀπόθεστος ἀποιχομένοιο ἄνακτος, / ἐν πολλῇ κόπρῳ,(17.296-297), then he lay neglected, his master gone, on a great heap of dung,
A dog lying down lifts its head and ears. On seeing Odysseus, it recognizes its master:
οὐρῇ μέν ῥʼ ὅ γʼ ἔσηνε καὶ οὔατα κάββαλεν ἄμφω, / ἆσσον δʼ οὐκέτʼ ἔπειτα δυνήσατο οἷο ἄνακτος / ἐλθέμεν· αὐτὰρ ὁ νόσφιν ἰδὼν ἀπομόρξατο δάκρυ,(17.302-304), with his tail he wagged and dropped both ears, but he could no longer come closer to his master; and Odysseus, looking aside, wiped away a tear,
Odysseus asks Eumaeus whose dog that is, whether it was swift or only for show, and Eumaeus answers that it was the dog of a master who died far away, swift and sure on the scent, and that now the maids do not care for it:
ἥμισυ γάρ τʼ ἀρετῆς ἀποαίνυται εὐρύοπα Ζεὺς / ἀνέρος, εὖτʼ ἄν μιν κατὰ δούλιον ἦμαρ ἕλῃσιν.(17.322-323), for wide-seeing Zeus takes away half of a man's excellence when the day of slavery seizes him.
Eumaeus enters the palace, and the narrator closes the scene:
Ἄργον δʼ αὖ κατὰ μοῖρʼ ἔλαβεν μέλανος θανάτοιο, / αὐτίκʼ ἰδόντʼ Ὀδυσῆα ἐεικοστῷ ἐνιαυτῷ.(17.326-327), but Argos, for his part, was seized by the fate of black death, as soon as he saw Odysseus in the twentieth year.
In the neighboring books, the dogs at Eumaeus's hut do the opposite: in Book XIV, they run barking at the beggar, who sits down and sets down his staff; in Book XVI, they fawn on Telemachus and do not bark at the goddess whom only Odysseus and they can see.
What It Means
Argos recognizes the master when no one else does, not even Eumaeus, who stands beside him. All the dog can manage is the movement of his tail and ears, and Odysseus can answer only with a tear wiped away sideways, hidden from Eumaeus. The disguise has its price: the hero cannot go to meet the one who recognized him.
The poem links the dog's death to the recognition without comment. The dog's waiting had one object, and death takes him at the moment that waiting is fulfilled, twenty years later. The dog's abandonment is also that of servants without their master's hand, and Eumaeus's maxim, that Zeus takes away half of a man's excellence when the day of slavery seizes him, gains, spoken before the disguised master, a second meaning that he does not perceive.
Argos is the only one who recognizes Odysseus without demanding proof. Telemachus asks for an explanation, the nurse touches the scar, the servants see the mark, Penelope wants the bed, and Laertes wants the trees. The dog asks for nothing, and Odysseus gives him neither a name nor a sign. His loyalty appears as the opposite of the prudent doubt of Penelope and Eumaeus, who guard against being deceived, and death takes him right after.
Relationships
- Standard themes: Loyalty and betrayal, Home, exile and return, Identity.
- Characters: Odysseus, Eumaeus.
- Neighboring symbols: the scar of Odysseus, the bodily sign others need to see, and the bed of olive wood, the sign of the secret.