Nestor

Nestor was a son of Neleus, king of Pylos. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees Nestor's mother Chloris among the dead, and Homer names her children: Nestor, Chromius, Periclymenus and a daughter, Pero. Apollodorus gives Neleus twelve sons by Chloris. When Heracles sacked Pylos, he killed Neleus's sons, Periclymenus among them, though Poseidon had given that brother the power to change his shape. Apollodorus says Nestor alone was saved, because he was being brought up among the Gerenians.

Nestor tells his own youth at length in the Iliad. In Book 11 he recalls a cattle raid on Elis, where he killed Itymoneus and drove fifty herds of cattle home to Pylos. When the Epeians struck back, his father hid his horses, thinking the boy knew nothing yet of war. The boy fought on foot anyway. He killed Mulius, took his chariot, and captured fifty chariots. He would have killed the two Moliones, he says, had their father, the Earth-Shaker, not hidden them in mist.

Other speeches add more. In Book 7 he says he killed the giant Ereuthalion when he was the youngest of all who might have faced him. In Book 1 he claims he fought beside Peirithous and Theseus against the mountain-dwelling centaurs. In Book 23 he recalls the funeral games for Amarynceus at Buprasium. He won the boxing, the wrestling, the foot race and the spear throw, and lost only the chariot race, to the twin sons of Actor.

At Troy, the old king leads the men of Pylos, with ninety ships in Homer's catalogue. Book 1 introduces him as the clear-voiced speaker of the Pylians, whose words flowed sweeter than honey. He tries to settle the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles. He tells Agamemnon to leave Briseis alone and Achilles not to strive with a king. In Book 8 Paris shoots one of his horses, and Diomedes takes the old man onto his own chariot to save him from Hector.

His advice moves the plot. In Book 9 he reminds Agamemnon that he tried to stop him taking Briseis, and urges him to win Achilles back with gifts and gentle words. In Book 11 he tells Patroclus to ask Achilles for his armor, so the Trojans might take him for Achilles and draw back. That is the plan that sends Patroclus into battle. In Book 23 Nestor coaches his son Antilochus for the chariot race, telling him to wheel close around the turning post.

In the Odyssey the war is over and the king is home. Telemachus finds him on the shore at Pylos with his sons, sacrificing black bulls to Poseidon. The old man has no news of Odysseus. He tells how the Greeks split after Troy, how he sailed straight home, and how Aegisthus murdered Agamemnon. His own is one of the quick, safe homecomings. He sends Telemachus on to Menelaus at Sparta, with his son Peisistratus driving the chariot.

When Athena, disguised as Mentor, leaves in the form of a sea-eagle, the king recognizes her and vows her a heifer with gilded horns. The next morning his six sons gather around him: Echephron, Stratius, Perseus, Aretus, Thrasymedes and Peisistratus. At the sacrifice his wife Eurydice, eldest daughter of Clymenus, raises the women's cry. His youngest daughter Polycaste bathes Telemachus.

One son is missing. In Odyssey Book 3 Nestor names Antilochus among the dead at Troy, and in Book 4 Peisistratus weeps for him at Menelaus's table, slain by the son of the Dawn. Apollodorus's Epitome names that killer as Memnon. Pindar's sixth Pythian ode tells how it happened. Paris had wounded a horse of Nestor's chariot, and Memnon came on with his spear. Antilochus stood his ground and died so that his father could live.

Ovid gives Nestor a precise age and a long grudge. In Metamorphoses Book 12 he tells the Greek chiefs he has lived two hundred years and is now in his third century. Asked why he never praises Heracles, he says Heracles ruined Pylos and killed eleven of the twelve sons of Neleus. Pausanias, visiting Pylos, saw a house called the house of Nestor with a painting of him inside, and says his tomb was in the city.