Who was Argos, Odysseus’s dog?

A dog raised before the war

Homer brings Argos in at a tense moment in book 17. Odysseus, disguised by Athena as a ragged old beggar, has just reached the gate of his own palace with his loyal swineherd Eumaeus, and the suitors are feasting inside. A dog lying nearby lifts his head and pricks up his ears. Odysseus had bred him himself before sailing for Troy, but never got to hunt with him. In the old days the young men took Argos after wild goats, deer and hares. Now, with his master gone, he lies neglected on the mule and cow dung piled outside the stable doors until the farmhands carry it off to manure the fields, and he is crawling with fleas.

The recognition

Twenty years have changed the man, not the dog’s sense of him. The moment Argos sees the beggar, he knows him:

he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master.

He is too old and weak to get up. And Odysseus cannot go to him: a beggar who greeted the king’s dog like an old friend would give himself away in front of Eumaeus. So he wipes away a tear before the swineherd sees it and asks, as any stranger might, whether that splendid hound is as good as he looks, or just a table dog kept for show.

Eumaeus answers with pride and grief. In his prime, he says, no wild beast in the forest could escape this dog once he had its scent. But his master has died far away, and the women of the house do not look after him; servants slack off when the master is gone. Then Eumaeus walks into the hall, and Homer gives the dog one last sentence. Having seen Odysseus again, in the twentieth year, Argos dies.

How old was Argos?

If he was a puppy when Odysseus left, Argos was at least twenty, an age very few dogs reach; most do not live much past thirteen. Homer is not keeping veterinary records. Twenty is the number that measures the whole Odyssey: ten years at war and ten more getting home, with Argos waiting through all of them. His name probably means ‘swift’ or ‘bright’: Homer calls fast hunting dogs argoi. He is no relation of Argus, the hundred-eyed giant of other myths, or of the Greek city of Argos.

Why the scene lasts

Argos gets fewer than forty lines, and readers have never forgotten them. He is the opposite of the suitors, who live in Odysseus’s house without knowing him, and a quiet contrast with Penelope, who will test her husband carefully before she believes him. The dog needs no test. His loyalty costs him everything and asks for nothing, and it makes a hard man hide his tears.