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The article discusses the use and absence of the augment in the third person singular and plural forms εδωκ(ε)(v) and 6 δωκ(ε)(v) in the Odyssey. It uses metrically secure forms and lists the criteria for determining these secure forms. The article then proceeds to analyse them and verify if they confirm to previous syntactic and semantic observations which have been made for the use and absence of the augment: the clitic rule by Drewitt and Beck, the reduction rule by Kiparsky and the distinctions speech versus narrative, foreground versus background and remote versus recent past. It is argued that we are only dealing with tendencies and not with absolute rules, and that, as a consequence, there are exceptions to the rules mentioned. These tendencies can explain, however, most of the (un)augmented forms in early epic Greek and it can be argued that the augment was originally a marker of the near-deixis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]