The war that Menelaus waged against Troy was a long and bitter ordeal. It took ten years to win the battle, and the return was no easier; in the case of Odysseus, the voyage home took another ten years.

A lot can change in twenty days, let alone twenty years. In his absence, his palace had been overrun with potential suitors, all hoping to woo his apparent widow, Penelope. His son had grown up to be a young adult. And then there was his dog, Argos…

At this point in the story (Chapter 17), Odysseus has returned to his city of Ithaca. However, to rid his palace of his unwanted ‘guests’, he comes disguised as a beggar. With the exception of his son, Telemachus, no one saw through his disguise, even his lifelong servant Eumaeus – no one, that is, except his faithful dog:

As they were speaking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Odysseus had bred before setting out for Troy, though they never had time to hunt together before Odysseus was forced to leave for battle.

As soon as Argos saw Odysseus approaching, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not rise to greet his master. When Odysseus saw the dog on the other side of the yard, he wiped tears from his eyes and said:

‘Eumaeus, what a noble hound is that is over yonder on the manure heap: his build is splendid; is he as fine a fellow as he looks, or is he only one of those dogs that come begging about a table, and are kept merely for show?’

‘This dog,’ answered Eumaeus, ‘belonged to him who has died in a far country. If he were what he was when Odysseus left for Troy, he would soon show you what he could do.

There was not a wild beast in the forest that could get away from him when he was once on its tracks. But now he has fallen on evil times, for his master is dead and gone, and the women take no care of him.

Servants never do their work when their master’s hand is no longer over them, for Zeus takes half the goodness out of a man when he makes a slave of him.’

So, saying he entered the well-built mansion and made straight for the riotous pretenders in the hall. But Argos passed into the darkness of death, now that he had fulfilled his destiny of faith and seen his master once more after twenty years.

—Homer, Odyssey, Book 17, translated by Stanley Lombardo

As we’ve seen in other mythologies, the relationship between humans and canines is complicated. Yudishtira, hero king of the Indian Epic the Mahabharata, gave up the apparent bliss of the heavens out of fidelity to a dog that had followed him in the last phase of his journey; on the other hand, the Norse God Tyr, who helped raise the ravenous wolf Fenris, lost his arm when his fellow deities attempted to chain the beast.

But Odysseus’ relationship with Argos points to a different form of loss; time yields for no one, not even one as clever as Odysseus. Sweet Penelope had aged; the young son he left behind was now an adult in his own right. And Argos, his faithful companion from twenty years before, had fulfilled his destiny.

Seeing Odysseus one last time, the moment had come for Argos to go gently into the night…

*

The take away? One on hand, the Odyssey is an epic adventure tale, replete with angry gods, frightful monsters, and seductive enchantresses. It even has a journey to the land of the dead; but at its core, it’s a story of a lost man finding his way home, longing for the wife he left behind, a son who he wasn’t present to raise, and the dog who waited.

Is Homer giving us a tale of PTSD? That’s a modern way of framing it, but that’s the nature of stories; the ones that last are always being reframed.

Is Homer giving us a tale of a boy and his dog? That’s always been a way of framing the Odyssey, from the times of the blind bard himself, down to Christopher Nolan’s modern reinterpretation.

(A parting note: you might have noticed the similarity between Argos and the Argo, the ship from Jason and the Argonauts. While Argos can be translated as “shining white”, it also translates as “swift”, desirable traits in a hunting/watch dog as well as in a ship).