A terrifying image of Odysseus in pursuit of prey, like a flesh-tearing dog on the trail of a defenseless deer or rabbit.  Odysseus, loving son, father, husband, great wise hero and, let us not forget, ‘sacker of cities’.  He’s a complex character. 

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters and Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘And, as when two rip-fanged hounds have sighted a wild beast,

a young deer, or a hare, and go after it, eagerly always

through the spaces of the woods and the chase runs crying before them,

so the son of Tydeus, and Odysseus, sacker of cities,

kept always hard on his heels and cut him off from his people.’ 

Source: Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1961 (1951)), book X, p. 227