Argus Odysseus heads for town with Eumaeus. Outside the palace, Odysseus's old dog, Argus, is lying at rest as his long-absent master approaches. While he spoke an old hound, lying near, pricked up his ears and lifted up his muzzle. This was Argus, trained as a puppy by Odysseus, but never taken on a hunt before his master sailed for Troy. The young men, afterward, hunted wild goats with him, and hare, and deer, but he had grown old in his master's absence. Treated as rubbish now, he lay at last upon a mass of dung before the gates-manure of mules and cows, piled there until fieldhands could spread it on the king's estate. Abandoned there, and half destroyed with flies, old Argus lay. But when he knew he heard Odysseus's voice nearby, he did his best to wag his tail, nose down, with flattened ears, having no strength to move nearer his master. And the man looked away, wiping a salt tear from his cheek; but he hid this from Eumaeus. Then he said: "I marvel that they leave this hound to lie here on the dung pile; he would have been a fine dog, from the look of him, though I can't say as to his power and speed when he was young. You find the same good build in house dogs, table dogs landowners keep all for style." And you replied, Eumaeus: "A hunter owned him-but the man is dead in some far place. If this old hound could show the form he had when Lord Odysseus left him, going to Troy, you'd see him swift and strong. He never shrank from any savage thing he'd brought to bay in the deep woods; on the scent no other dog kept up with him. Now misery has him in leash. His owner died abroad, and here the women slaves will take no care of him. You know how servants are: without a master they have no will to labor, or excel. For Zeus who views the wide world takes away half the manhood of a man, that day he goes into captivity and slavery." Eumaeus crossed the court and went straight forward into the megaron among the suitors: but death and darkness in that instant closed the eyes of Argus, who had seen his master, Odysseus, after twenty years. Annotations