Relation of Argos and the Palace of Odysseus

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This Palace Has Four Broken Legs “A dog represents all that is best in a man” (Etienne Charlet). In The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Richmond Lattimore, the reader is sadly presented with the dilapidated image of Argos, Odysseus’s beloved and faithful dog, who represents the moral and physical decay of Odysseus’s Palace in Ithaca. As such, the heartwarming recognition scene in book seventeen conveys that even though the dog, and palace as well, are in ruins, there is hope; the kind of hope that you see when Argos wags his tick-infested tail for the last time. This scene is the most powerful of all the homecoming books in The Odyssey because though he has been gone from his home and beloved canine, the recognition Argos shows toward the disguised Odysseus gives him hope and strength that he can once again rule Ithaca and be with his much loved wife and son, Telemachos. In book seventeen of The Odyssey, Telemachus leaves Odysseus at Eumaeus’s, the swine-herder’s, hut and heads to his palace, where he receives a tearful welcome from his mother Penelope. When he sits down to eat with Penelope, Telemachus tells her what little news he received of Odysseus in Pylos and Sparta, but he dos not divulge that he has seen Odysseus in Eumaeus’s hut. While Telemachus converses with his mother, Eumaeus and Odysseus set out for the palace and run into a base subordinate of the suitors who belittled Eumaeus and kicks Odysseus who is cleverly disguised as a beggar. When the men get to the palace, Odysseus receives a similar welcome; they give him rotten food, insult him, and bash him with a chair when Odysseus insults them in return. While in the palace Odysseus notices, “a dog who was laying there [who] raised his head and ears. This was Argos, patient-hearted Odysseus’ dog, whom he himself” (Lattimore 260). Though the inhospitable suitors abuse Odysseus, he sees a glimpse

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