Homer’s Odyssey, with its fabulous monsters and intense tale of human endurance, was a natural candidate for Christopher Nolan’s latest Hollywood blockbuster. But amid all the fantasy and heroic human drama, there are two far more homely scenes in the poem which remain among the epic’s most memorable. Both involve animals.

One is the touching, tragically brief reunion of the hero (played in the film by Matt Damon) with his faithful dog Argos. It’s a deceptively low-key episode which reflects powerfully on the epic’s themes of patience, loyalty and loss.

The other is the man-eating cyclops’s sudden display of a softer side. He addresses his favourite ram as Pepon, a term of endearment elsewhere applied to close friends and relatives. The cyclops wonders aloud if the ram is grieving for his master’s lost eye, or sharing his desire for revenge.

Both episodes demonstrate Homer’s remarkable capacity to ground the heroic world in the whole range of human experience, and to stress the essential links between humans and the natural world. The wide-ranging world of Homeric heroes involves not just fantastic beasts, powerful divinities and aristocrats, but ordinary men, women and creatures.

Human-animal bonds in ancient Greek poetry

The bonds between humans and animals, whether working or otherwise, are richly represented in both literature and visual arts throughout ancient Greek culture.

Odysseus’s wife, Penelope, has pet geese which she describes as “warming her heart” when she sees them. Penelope weeps for them when, in a dream, they are killed by an eagle.

In Homer’s other epic poem, the Iliad, Hector calls on his chariot horses to remember the sweet mash his wife used to feed them, even before she attended to her husband. And Achilles’s horses weep when his friend Patroclus is killed – they are frozen in mourning “like a pillar on a man or woman’s tomb”.

In later Greek literature, there is a well-established corpus of epitaphs memorialising dogs. The 6th-5th BC poet Simonides is sometimes attributed as the author of this vivid tribute inscribed on the gravestone of a female hunting dog:

Although you are dead, huntress Lycas, I fancy that the beasts still tremble at your white bones in this tomb: your valour is known to high Pelion and far-seen Ossa and the peaks of Cithaeron with their lonely pastures.

Human-animal bonds in ancient Greek art

Extensive research documents the widespread depiction of both working dogs and lapdogs in vase painting and sculpture. The Beazley Archive pottery database in Oxford lists well over 1,400 examples of dogs in vase paintings from 700-200BC – and examples survive from earlier still.

The British Museum collection includes a bowl from the Mycenaean period (1750 to 1050BC) in which the Homeric epics are set. It depicts a man struggling to control two rather frisky small dogs on leads.

Although there is only sparse evidence of the Greeks using dogs in warfare, vase paintings showing warriors bidding their family farewell frequently include a dog. The latter may be interpreted either as accompanying the warrior or being left behind.

In a more domestic context, dogs positioned beneath the couches of men at a symposia enjoying wine (and other bodily pleasures) are a recurring visual theme, as in a well-known example from Corinth (600–590 BC).

While dogs, especially hunting dogs, may figure in art and funerary monuments as a status symbol, they also appear in contexts suggesting a close affectionate bond. A relief from Sparta shows a seated man with high-status accoutrements but also with a small dog pawing at his knees.

In classical Athenian funerary reliefs, such dogs are a recurring motif, predominantly accompanying figures of young age and especially children.

One example is the grave monument for a young girl named Euchalia, which depicts her with her parents, grandmother and a small dog poised on its hind legs and pawing at her knees. The dog is probably what was called a Meletian – a lapdog breed noted for its affection and gentleness.

What Argos symbolises

Dogs were not universally viewed positively in the ancient world – “dog” is a derogatory term applied as an insult to both women and men in the epics. But Argos’s fidelity is a marker both of Odysseus’s value to his own society, and of the worth of that society beneath all its disruption and decay.

While Odysseus is clearly needed back in Ithaca, he requires the support of down-to-earth slaves like the swineherd Eumaeus – and perhaps the psychological validation that Argos’s fidelity provides too.

The Argos episode contrasts with the start of book 14, where Odysseus first arrives home. There, his own guard dogs at Eumaeus’s farmstead fail to recognise him and prepare to attack:

Suddenly then the baying dogs caught sight of Odysseus, and rushed upon him with loud barking, but Odysseus sat down, in his cunning, and the staff fell from his hand. Then in his own farmstead he would have suffered cruel hurt.

This is a sobering marker of how long Odysseus has been away, and how alien he and his home have become to one another. The point is reinforced when Odysseus’s son, Telemachus, arrives and the same dogs greet him with the sort of affection Argos later shows Odysseus.

This painfully parallels the way Odysseus must stand and look on as the swineherd and his own son – who cannot recognise him – reunite affectionately “like father and son”. It’s a reminder of all that Odysseus has missed through his long absence.

The Odyssey treats Argos’s story with a skilful balance of earthy realism, sharp irony and poignancy. Homer contrasts the dog’s energetic youth with his current neglect – sat on a dunghill, riddled with vermin when he is briefly reunited with his master.

There is a strong emotional connection, but physical contact and reunion prove impossible. Argos is too feeble to move towards Odysseus despite his pricked ears and wagging tail. Odysseus, although moved, dares not show recognition for fear of disclosing his identity at a dangerous moment, when he is surrounded by the murderous suitors trying to win Penelope’s heart.

Heart-warmingly, the faithful companion gets to see his master one last time before he dies. But there remains a sense of frustrated fulfilment that highlights the darker side of Odysseus’s story – all that can never be recovered after long absence, despite all that is regained.

Heroism and heroic achievement are highly valued and often celebrated in the Homeric poems. But these poems also celebrate and mourn the everyday relationships with man, woman and beast alike, which in this story are of equal – and perhaps more lasting – value.

Susanna Phillippo, Senior Lecturer in Classics, Newcastle University and Sally Waite, Senior Lecturer in Greek Art and Archaeology History, Classics and Archaeology, Newcastle University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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