Chapter 6. Odyssey 3 and Iliad 8

{172|173} §2.56 In the Odyssey Nestor is the same figure as in the Iliad except that he is now at home in Pylos ten years after the war. In the Iliad he is said to have outlived two generations of men and to rule in yet a third; in the Odyssey much the same is said of him. [71] In the Iliad, as we have seen, Nestor plays a large role of an unusual sort in the story of Patroclus. His role is based upon his own epic traditions concerning his youth, as he retells them in his advanced old age. In the Odyssey he is called on to tell another story, but not about his youth. Telemachus visits him to ask about his father, Odysseus, who has not returned to Ithaca in the ten years since the war ended, but whose death has also not been reported. Telemachus wants to hear what Nestor knows, either from direct observation or from hearsay. Nestor tells him, but his story is all about what he himself saw and experienced at first hand soon after the fall of Troy, when the Achaeans left for home. He then parted company with Odysseus, and he has heard nothing about him since. Telemachus thus learns little to encourage him, and he must wait until he visits Menelaus in Sparta to learn what Menelaus heard from Proteus, the old man of the sea, that Odysseus is still alive on Calypso’s island. [72]

§2.57 In the Iliad the stories about Nestor’s youth that relate to Patroclus are told in such a way as to conceal their true purpose and point. Their relevance is not on the surface of the poem, but just below the surface. Something similar is at work in Nestor’s account of the departure from Troy. In the Iliad what is deliberately withheld is Nestor’s myth, in which he does not save his warrior brother, but takes his place. In the Odyssey the same myth remains {173|174} the essence of the figure Nestor, and it explains what really took place when Nestor last saw Odysseus. What must also be kept in mind, however, is the meaning of Nestor’s name, for this is central to his role in the Odyssey. Néstōr is “he who brings home,” and when he parts company from Odysseus at the very moment of the Achaeans’ homecoming from Troy, he reenacts his own myth, for just as he did not save his brother, he does not bring Odysseus home. What the consequences of this are for Odysseus remain to be considered, but they do involve a kind of death, just as in the case of Nestor’s brother Periklymenos. Although Odysseus will return from this death it will not be by Nestor’s agency, but through others. In and of itself, Nestor’s role in the homecoming of Odysseus is a negative one based on his own myth, and this is the unspoken point of Odyssey 3.

§2.58 The key point in this, and the point with which we begin, is that a nóstos has an essential connection with the Indo-European twin myth. This is not an obvious point when we think of the return home from Troy of an entire army or its various contingents. Nestor too knows from hearsay how various contingents fared once they departed from Troy, and he passes this information on to Telemachus, mentioning the safe return of the Myrmidons under Achilles’ son, of Philoktetes, and of the Cretans under Idomeneus (Odyssey 3.186–192). But this is not the heart of his story. Phemios also sings of the “return of the Achaeans” to the suitors in Odyssey 1, and in the brief description of his song this return is characterized as a “grim” one (Odyssey 1.326–327):

It is this grim return, brought on by Pallas Athena, that Nestor recounts first, and from firsthand experience, to Telemachus. If we follow his account in detail, we will find not only how the entire Achaean nóstos is conceived of in terms of the twin myth, but also how this myth relates to Nestor and Odysseus.

§2.59 When Telemachus begs Nestor to tell him the truth, if ever Odysseus carried out a promised word or deed for him at Troy, Nestor thinks first of the grief that the Achaeans suffered at Troy, which he recalls as the place of death for all the best of the Achaeans, and he names Ajax, Achilles, {174|175} Patroclus, and his own son Antilochus, who all perished there (Odyssey 3.103–112). As for the many other evils that they suffered at Troy, he could not tell them all if Telemachus stayed five or six years to ask about them (Odyssey 3.113–117). When Nestor goes on to mention the evils that for nine years the Achaeans devised against the Trojans “with all kinds of wiles” (pantoíoisi dóloisi, Odyssey 3.119), and that Zeus barely brought to completion, the way is prepared to introduce the subject of Odysseus, and of Nestor’s own relationship with Odysseus. No one, he says, wished to compete with Odysseus in mē̂tis (Odyssey 3.120), for he was by far the best “in all kinds of wiles” (pantoíoisi dóloisi, Odyssey 3.122). [73] After paying Telemachus a compliment for his own “seemly” speech, which is so like his father’s (Odyssey 3.122–125), Nestor says that during the war he and Odysseus never disagreed with each other in an assembly or a council, but “having one mind” (héna thumòn ékhonte) they counseled what was best for the Argives (Odyssey 3.126–129):

§2.60 But things changed after Troy was captured, as is signaled by the word, autár, “however,” as Nestor’s story continues; what happened “during the war, on the one hand” (heîos mén, Odyssey 3.126) was not the same as what happened after the war (autàr epeí, “however, when,” Odyssey 3.130). But the significance of the word autár for the relationship between Nestor and Odysseus after the war had ended will not be brought out for another twenty-nine lines. First we will hear what befell the Achaeans as a whole after Troy was sacked. This is the story of the “grim return” of the Achaeans that Phemios began to tell in Book 1. In Nestor’s account, it was first of all Zeus who devised this “grim return” for the Argives, because of the wrongs committed by some of them. But, as in Phemios’s song, it was Athena, who, {175|176} because of her own anger, caused the actual destruction of many of the Achaeans (Odyssey 3.130–135):

What Athena did first to set this “grim return” in motion was to cause a quarrel (éris) between the two Atreidai, the commanders-in-chief of the Achaeans: ἥ τ' ἔριν Ἀτρεΐδῃσι μετ' ἀμφοτέροισιν ἔθηκε (Odyssey 3.136). The scene of the quarrel was a drunken and disorderly assembly of the entire army which the Atreidai called at nightfall (Odyssey 3.137–140):

The Atreidai had called the assembly to consider the army’s return, but they disagreed over what should be done. Menelaus spoke first, and he urged the Achaeans “to remember their nóstos,” but this did not please Agamemnon, who foolishly wished “to restrain the army,” and to try to appease the angry Athena with sacrifices (Odyssey 3.141–147): {176|177}

§2.61 Athena sets the “grim return” of the Achaeans in motion by causing a split between the two Atreidai. As we have noted earlier, the Atreidai, in their association with Helen, are twin figures. [74] What finally divides them is the very issue of their nóstos, and their opposition to each other in the Achaean assembly strikingly resembles, in what each brother wants to do separately, the different functions that the Epeian twins performed between them in their chariot race against Nestor: to “incite” on the one hand, and to “restrain” on the other hand. Menelaus, who “urged all the Achaeans to remember their return,” has the function of the immortal twin, which is to “incite” and to “bring back to life”; these two ideas are in fact intertwined, since the context of Menelaus’s incitement is a nóstos, with its underlying sense of a “return to life.” Agamemnon, who “wished to restrain the army,” has the mortal twin’s function. The context is again significant, for Troy, as Nestor emphasizes at the beginning of his speech, was a place of death, and to “restrain” the army there was in effect to deny it a nóstos in both senses of the word, not only a “return home,” but also a “return to life.” Thus the Atreidai exercised the functions of the twins of the Indo-European myth, but they did not work together, as the Epeian twins did in the chariot race, but split apart. For the Atreidai themselves the consequence of this split was a sharp contrast in their fates. Whereas Menelaus, despite delays on the way, {177|178} would eventually reach home in Sparta, and beyond that was fated not to die, but to be sent to live in bliss in the Elysian fields because of his marriage to Helen, the daughter of Zeus (Odyssey 4.561–569), Agamemnon would perish en nóstōi, “in his nóstos” (Odyssey 4.497) at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra. In other words, Agamemnon, despite the fact that he would again set foot on his native soil, would not have a nóstos in the sense of a “safe return.” [75]

§2.62 The division between the Atreidai had consequences not only for themselves, but for the Achaean army as a whole. When the Atreidai quarreled in the assembly about their nóstos, the army was split in two (Odyssey 3.148–150):

The two factions passed the night harboring harsh thoughts toward each other in their minds, and when dawn came one part of the army, including Nestor, prepared to set sail (Odyssey 3.151–154):

But the half of the army remaining with Agamemnon was “restrained” as the others put out to sea (Odyssey 3.155–158):

In these lines, with the division of the army into two halves, one of which is “restrained” while the other half begins its return, it is clear that the twin myth enacted by the Atreidai sets the basic terms for the whole “grim return” of the Achaeans. It is hard not to equate the two halves of the army with those who would achieve a safe nóstos and those who would not. This does not mean that we need to catalogue every contingent at Troy on one side or the other, or that even the poet could have done so. The division is, I think, intended to be schematic rather than comprehensive. For Agamemnon and those whom he “restrained,” the outlook was not good. At best they were guilty of “foolishness” in thinking an angered Athena could be appeased (cf. nḗpios, “foolish,” of Agamemnon in Odyssey 3.146). [76] Presumably this half of the army also coincided with the evildoers who caused Athena’s wrath in the first place, although we can name only a few of these, and perhaps the poet could not have named many more. [77] Again the categories seem to {179|180} be suggestive rather than all inclusive. The basic categories, however, are those that emerge from the twin myth as reenacted by the Atreidai. Like the Atreidai, the army was divided into those who would achieve a safe nóstos and those who would not.

§2.63 Nestor’s account, having made clear that the basic terms of the Achaeans’ nóstos are those of the twin myth, next focuses on his own role in this nóstos. As we have seen, Nestor was with the half of the army that set sail on the morning after the army was split by the quarrel. His account is about to come back to the point from which he began, and which has been left hanging in the meantime, namely his relationship with Odysseus. During the war, he said, he and Odysseus never disagreed with one another in an assembly or council, but “with one mind” they devised what was best for the Argives by their wits and shrewd council; but when Troy was sacked, things (we infer) changed. We have heard how Zeus devised an evil homecoming for the Achaeans, and how Athena split the army in two. Now, twenty-nine lines later, we learn that the unanimity between Nestor and Odysseus during the war did indeed change after the war, just as the word autár in Odyssey 3.130 implies. For when those with Menelaus reached the nearby island of Tenedos, and stopped to offer sacrifices, another quarrel (éris) broke out. Nestor does not say who the parties to the quarrel were but Odysseus was clearly one of the parties, for he turned back and returned with his ships and men to Agamemnon. Who the other party was Nestor does not say, but he makes clear that he himself was no longer of one mind with Odysseus as he had been hitherto. For when Odysseus turned back to Agamemnon, Nestor fled in the opposite direction (Odyssey 3.159–166):

§2.64 Nestor does not say that it was he who quarreled with Odysseus on the island of Tenedos, but it is clear from his account that this is what happened. When Nestor says that he “realized that the god intended evil,” he shows that he had a clear view about the situation that confronted them on Tenedos, and when he says that he fled with his ships, he shows that he had a firm conviction about what to do and acted on it. No more need be said to show that Nestor and Odysseus, who had always been of one mind during the war, quarreled bitterly and split from each other after the war on the issue of their nóstos. This is what the subtle design of Nestor’s whole account is intended to show. Nestor is giving this account to Odysseus’s son, who has come to him to find out about his father, and it is thus more than fitting that he suppress an explicit statement of the quarrel that constituted their final leave-taking from one another. This suppression is also wholly consistent with Nestor’s role in the Iliad, as we have examined it in the story of Patroclus in Iliad 11 and 23. In the way that Nestor’s role is handled poetically there is no difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey, and this as an important point in its own right. It means that we may continue to expect the kind of subtlety that marked his role in the Iliad in the Odyssey as well.

§2.65 What is the significance of Nestor’s account for the story of Odysseus? The first thing to note is that Odysseus left Troy after the first quarrel, with the part of the army that remembered its nóstos, and that, in my {181|182} view, was destined to return home safely. If the first quarrel made the basic division between the saved and the damned, so to speak, then Odysseus was among the saved, although he might not reach home safely for a long time. And what took place on Tenedos ensured that he would not return for a long time, for not only did he mistakenly return to Agamemnon and the half of the army being “restrained” by him; he also separated himself from Néstōr, “the homebringer.” The weight of this fact in the story of course depends heavily on the meaning of the name Néstōr, which I believe was still crystal clear to the Homeric audience. [78]

§2.66 For Nestor’s own story his name is of equal significance. Nestor’s myth is not to bring his brother back to life, and the same negative fact is repeated in his failure to bring Odysseus home. But Nestor, “the homebringer,” does more than simply return home in his story in Odyssey 3. Others did that, and the simple fact of returning does not bring out what is special about Nestor. Nestor, if we follow his story closely, brought another hero home. When Nestor fled from Tenedos in the opposite direction from Odysseus, he was not alone; Diomedes fled with him (Odyssey 3.165–167):

Nestor and Diomedes are a pair on their nóstos, as is made clear by the next lines, which concern Menelaus, the leader of the half of the army that had left Troy for home after the first quarrel. Nestor and Diomedes leave Tenedos together, and Menelaus only overtakes them when they stop on the island of Lesbos to ponder a major decision about the rest of their journey home (Odyssey 3.168–172): {182|183}

The issue was whether to cut straight across the Aegean for home, with all the risks that the open sea entailed, or to take a safer course to the south by way of Mount Mimas on the mainland and the Cyclades islands, and risk being caught by the divine wrath through this delay. A divine sign was asked for and given, to cross the sea directly to Euboea, which they did, landing on the southern tip of the island in Geraistos, where they offered a sacrifice of thanks to Poseidon (Odyssey 3.173–179):

Menelaus is not heard of again in this account, but we learn later in Odyssey 3, when Telemachus asks Nestor where Menelaus was when Agamemnon was {183|184} murdered, that Menelaus accompanied them from Geraistos as far as Cape Sounion in Attica, where his helmsman Phrontis, the son of Onetor, died and was buried (Odyssey 3.276–285). Menelaus later departed from Sounion on his own and was blown off course when he rounded Cape Maleia, but that has nothing to do with Nestor and his return, which is the subject of Nestor’s first account. This account mentions only Diomedes, who, after sacrifices were made at Geraistos, safely reached home in Argos on the fourth day (Odyssey 3.180–182):

Nestor was with Diomedes from the beginning of his nóstos to the end, and having left him safely in Argos, he completed his own nóstos effortlessly with a godsent wind that never abated (Odyssey 3.182–183):

This completes Nestor’s account of what he saw and experienced at first hand during the nóstos Akhaiō̂n. He reached home with great speed, and learned nothing of the fate of the other Achaeans; about them he can only tell Telemachus what he has learned from hearsay (Odyssey 3.184–187):

§2.67 Nestor does not say that he brought Diomedes safely home to Argos, just as he does not say that he quarreled with Odysseus and left him behind in Troy. But there can be no mistaking the fact that when Nestor and Diomedes left Tenedos together, Nestor was the leader if it was he who quarreled with Odysseus. For in this quarrel Nestor must have argued for an immediate nóstos, and departed at once when Odysseus returned in the opposite direction to Agamemnon. Diomedes, then, must simply have followed Nestor, not only in leaving Tenedos, but through his entire nóstos. This again is not stated, but is to be understood nonetheless. After leaving Tenedos, the next point of decision was Lesbos, where Nestor and Diomedes were still pondering their course, whether to cross the open sea or not, when Menelaus caught up with them. The question was decided for them, and for Menelaus as well, who now joined them, by a sign from the god urging them to make straight for Euboea across the open sea. Nestor says that “we asked the god for a sign, and he showed one to us,” but signs from the gods must be both perceived and interpreted before they can be followed, and of the three heroes on Lesbos the likeliest to have noticed and interpreted correctly the god’s sign is Nestor, at least to judge by his own words on two occasions in the Iliad. The first is in Iliad 2, where there is an interesting contrast to be {185|186} noticed between Nestor and Odysseus with regard to signs and in other respects as well. These two both play a role when Agamemnon tests the army, and the army unexpectedly breaks for the ships. In line with the contrast between Nestor and Odysseus on their nóstos, where Odysseus plays the mortal twin to Nestor’s immortal twin, Odysseus “restrains” the army’s headlong flight, most dramatically in the case of Thersites whom he smites with the staff, whereupon Nestor “incites” them, particularly Agamemnon, to return to the business of war. [80] Each of them in his speech to the army recalls an omen that occurred on their departure for Troy ten years earlier, but whereas Odysseus recalls the portent that the prophet Calchas interpreted for all, [81] Nestor tells of a sign that he saw for himself. After telling Agamemnon to rule steadfastly, and to let those few go to ruin who wish to return home on their own before they learn whether “Zeus’s promise was a lie or not” (Iliad 2.348–349), he vouches for the favorable sign that he saw from Zeus (lightning on the right) with the emphatic first person verb phēmí, “I declare” (Iliad 2.350–353):

The second passage is in Iliad 15, when Apollo destroys the Achaean wall and the Achaeans themselves are hemmed in by their ships. All pray to the gods, but Nestor most of all, and in his prayer he seems to refer to the same sign from Zeus that he recalls in Iliad 2 when he calls on Zeus to remember if he ever promised a safe return to “anyone” (Iliad 15.367–376):

Nestor does not limit the prayers that Zeus may have heard to his own, [82] but surely his own prayer is included, for how else did he know that Zeus had {187|188} “promised” a safe return to anyone, except by noticing a sign in answer to his own prayer? [83] It is significant that the prayers of which he reminds Zeus in Iliad 15 concern a nóstos from Troy: the reason that Néstōr, the “homebringer,” prays more than the others in Iliad 15 is precisely that the Achaeans’ nóstos is at issue now that the Achaean wall has been broken. And in answer to Nestor’s prayer, Zeus reaffirms the promise that he made to him before. The sign of Zeus’s earlier promise to Nestor was a lightning bolt sent on the right (Iliad 2.353). Zeus reconfirms his promise to Nestor by thundering when he hears his prayer in the desperate situation of Iliad 15 (Iliad 15.377–378):

We do not know who heard and understood this sign, since the text does not say, but we may be sure that Nestor himself did, since it was he who prayed for it. The only reaction to the sign that is mentioned is on the part of the Trojans, who misunderstand it, taking it as favorable to their attack (Iliad 15.379–380): [84]

§2.68 Keeping in mind the two passages in the Iliad that bear on Nestor’s ability to interpret signs from the gods when a nóstos is at issue, I return to the sign that was given on Lesbos when Nestor, Diomedes, and Menelaus hesitated there, and I think that there is every reason to believe that it was Nestor who both solicited and correctly interpreted this sign. [85] This is an important point, for the only occasion on which Néstōr, “the homebringer,” truly acts out his name in the Homeric poems is when he escorts Diomedes from Tenedos to Argos, and the decision to cross the sea directly from Lesbos to Euboea was a critical moment in this journey. Nestor’s apparent action in perceiving and interpreting a sign from the god reveals something important about the function of “homebringer” itself, as designated by Nestor’s name. If we consider the entire journey, it is really a series of decisions between two alternatives, and the journey is successful because Nestor unfailingly chooses the right alternative in each case. The first correct decision was to leave Troy with Menelaus, and not to stay behind with Agamemnon. The second was to flee onward from Tenedos, and not to return to Agamemnon with Odysseus. The final correct decision, for which a divine sign was sought, was to cross the open sea as quickly as possible from Lesbos to Euboea, and not to take the slower, apparently less dangerous route to the south through the Cyclades. The accurate perception and correct interpretation of divine signs, which {189|190} is emphasized in the case of the decision made at Lesbos, also characterized Nestor’s earlier decisions. When he fled from Tenedos with Diomedes, it was because he “recognized” that the god planned evil things (Odyssey 3.166):

Presumably Nestor had as clear an idea of what the gods intended when he first left Troy with Menelaus, for he calls Agamemnon “foolish” to think that by staying he could pacify Athena’s wrath with sacrifices, since the mind of the gods is not easily changed (Odyssey 3.146–147):

§2.69 The essence of Nestor’s action as the “homebringer,” then, is to make the right choice between two alternatives at each stage of the journey on the basis of an accurate perception of what the gods intend. The splitting of the issue into two alternatives at each new turn, the forging ahead quickly on the basis of an accurate perception of the right choice, and the simultaneous discarding of the wrong choice—all this describes a basic mental process. This is to say that the action of Néstōr, “he who brings home,” in negotiating each new turn on his nóstos, at the same time describes the process of nóos, “mind,” which is equivalent to Néstōr in derivation and meaning. We know from the chariot race in Iliad 23 that nóos is “incitement” as opposed to “restraint,” and that both qualities are necessary to round the turning post and complete the race successfully. A successful nóstos also involves turns, but a series of them instead of the single turn of the chariot race. Each new turn requires deliberation, and a choice must be made between two alternatives because there is doubt as to the correct course. [86] Néstōr and nóos represent the right choice in {190|191} each case, moving forward rapidly from one deliberation to the next, and to another after that, until finally the entire nóstos is successfully completed. The other half of the duality is the wrong choice, which is discarded at every new turn. In this process the “incitement” that defines nóos is at the same time a matter of “accurate perception,” for a successful nóstos depends on a perception of the correct choice at each new turn. Nestor, who accurately perceives signs from the gods, is again the embodiment of nóos, and of the verb noéō that is derived from nóos, inasmuch as the essential idea in both is “clear perception.” If nóos is both “incitement” and “clear perception,” the other half of the dual mental process is more complex. In the chariot race the Epeian twins are successful because one twin slows the chariot to make the turn, while the other incites it to win the race. The two twins stay together, and their inseparability is their strength. In the nóstos of Odyssey 3, however, there is a split between the right choice and the wrong choice, and the wrong choice is discarded. At two points the wrong choice is represented by an individual who is left behind. Agamemnon is left behind by Menelaus in Troy, and Odysseus is left behind by Nestor when he flees from Tenedos. Agamemnon and Odysseus are both in the position of the mortal twin, who dies and is not brought back to life, as in Nestor’s own variant of the twin myth. It thus appears that Nestor’s myth represents a further development of the Indo-European twin myth from the standpoint of the mental process that this myth describes. The same may also be said of nóos, which is depicted through Néstōr in the nóstos of Odyssey 3. [87] But in spite of this development, Néstōr and nóos remain involved in a duality. In the case of Néstōr, he brings Diomedes home, and Diomedes is thus in the position of the mortal twin of the Indo-European myth. He is inseparable from {191|192} Nestor, who is in the position of the Indo-European immortal twin, until his nóstos is completed. Thus at Lesbos, unlike what happened at Tenedos and Troy, no one is left behind. [88]

§2.70 The word nóos is not present in Nestor’s description of his nóstos, but the word does have an interesting occurrence earlier in his account, when he describes the harmony that existed between himself and Odysseus as counselors for the Argives during the war. He says that he and Odysseus never disagreed in assembly or council, “but having one mind we counseled what was best for the Argives with nóos and shrewd counsel” (Odyssey 3.126–129):

Nestor of course stresses the like-mindedness of Odysseus and himself with the phrase héna thumòn ékhonte, and the harmony between them at this stage {192|193} is the point. The phrase epíphroni boulē̂i, “with shrewd counsel,” nevertheless suggests Odysseus more than it does Nestor: the phrase occurs only one other time in Homer, namely in Odyssey 16, when Odysseus reveals himself to his son, and Telemachus repeats what he has always heard about his father, that he is both a warrior and “shrewd in counsel” (Odyssey 16.241–242):

If epíphroni boulē̂i, “with shrewd counsel,” characterizes Odysseus more particularly than it does Nestor, then nóōi, “with mind,” characterizes Nestor more particularly than it does Odysseus, and there thus seems to be a subtle division between them even in the context of their like-mindedness. The subtle distinction in the phrase nóōi kaì epíphroni boulē̂i, moreover, is reinforced by the fact that it echoes, by its wording and placement in the line, the phrase egṑ kaì dı̄̂os Odusseús two lines before. The echo of egṓ in nóōi is particularly strong, and I think that it is intentional. The intent is to draw attention to Néstōr, not only as the “homebringer,” but as the embodiment of nóos. We have already examined passages in the Iliad that equate nóos with Néstōr in an apparently deliberate way. [91] This example in Odyssey 3 belongs with them, for while it is perhaps more subtle, it is also more significant. Nestor, as the embodiment of nóos, is about to reveal what this really means by his account of his nóstos. At the same time, the subtle distinction drawn between himself and Odysseus in terms of nóos and “shrewd counsel,” even during the war, points ahead to the time when each would go his own way—Nestor to bring Diomedes home through his nóos, Odysseus to pursue his own fate through his “shrewd counsel.”

§2.71 There is another hero besides Odysseus whom Nestor fails to bring home from Troy, and this is his own son Antilochus, who dies in the war. The loss of Antilochus is a matter of close personal grief to Nestor, who in Odyssey {193|194} 3, in recalling all the grief that the Achaeans suffered at Troy (ὀϊζύος, Odyssey 3.103), remembers the death of his own son most of all (Odyssey 3.108–112):

Antilochus’s death is also a matter of grief to Peisistratos, Nestor’s youngest son, when he accompanies Telemachus to Sparta, and Menelaus’s warm speech of regret for the missing Odysseus turns the minds of all to grief. Peisistratos grieves for his brother Antilochus, whom Memnon, son of the dawn goddess Eos, slew (Odyssey 4.186–188):

For Nestor there is perhaps a special pathos in the fact that, whereas he brings Diomedes safely home, he cannot bring his own son home. The pathos is deepened by the fact that Diomedes is close in age to Antilochus, or even younger. In the council at the beginning of Iliad 9, when Diomedes defiantly rejects Agamemnon’s defeatism and says that he and his companion Sthenelos will remain to take Troy alone if necessary, Nestor gently rebukes him, as a father would his youngest son, for not reaching the “goal” (télos) of his words. Nestor himself then takes over for Diomedes, and remedies the {194|195} deficiencies in his advice by going through everything at length and in detail (Iliad 9.53–62):

§2.72 The relationship between Nestor and Diomedes, which is compared to that between a father and son in this passage, should be kept in mind in Odyssey 3. Indeed Nestor’s claim that Diomedes has not reached the “goal” of his words (ou télos híkeo múthōn) and that he himself, by contrast, “will go through everything” (pánta diíxomai), should be seen in close relation to their eventual nóstos together, when it will be Nestor who will guide them through each new turn, at Tenedos and Lesbos, to the “goal” of their journey. The relationship between Nestor and Diomedes that is depicted in the Iliad is thus consistent with, and serves to flesh out, what is implied in the Odyssey. {195|196}

§2.73 Book 9 is not the only context in which the Iliad depicts the relationship between Nestor and Diomedes. The passage in Book 9 actually follows on and develops an episode in Book 8, in which Nestor’s trace horse is shot by Paris, and Nestor himself is rescued by Diomedes. The episode begins when Zeus weighs the fates of the Achaeans and Trojans at midday, and the fate of the Achaeans sinks. Zeus sends a lightning bolt which the Achaeans see and all then begin to flee (Iliad 8.66–79). Only Nestor remains, because his trace horse is wounded and throws his other two horses into confusion. [94] As Nestor struggles to cut the trace horse free, Hector bears down on him, and only Diomedes sees the old man’s plight (Iliad 8.80–91):

The suggestion in Iliad 9 that the relationship between Nestor and Diomedes is like that between a father and son grows out of this episode in Iliad 8, for this episode evokes the later death of Antilochus, which it closely resembles. [95] When Diomedes comes to Nestor’s aid, and saves him, he anticipates an event that is similar in all respects except one. Antilochus saves his father’s life as does Diomedes, but he does so at the cost of his own life. Diomedes, on the other hand, lives to be brought home by Nestor at the end of the war. The death of Antilochus occurs after the death of Hector, when the Aethiopian Memnon has become the Trojans’ champion, and it is thus Memnon who imperils Nestor and slays Antilochus. The episode lies outside the time span of the Iliad, but is recreated in virtual form by the episode in Iliad 8. The actual episode, which was known to the Odyssey and formed part of the Aethiopis, [96] is told in full in Pindar, Pythian 6, where the story of Antilochus’s death is used to illustrate the general precept to honor one’s parents. The similarities to the episode in Iliad 8 are that it is again the wounding of Nestor’s trace horse by Paris’s arrow that puts the old man in danger, and that he is rescued by a young man from the onrush of the Trojans’ chief hero, Hector in the case of Diomedes, Memnon in the case of Antilochus. Pindar tells the story of Antilochus as follows (Pythian 6.28–42): [97]

§2.74 The connection of the episode in Iliad 8 with Antilochus’s death is well understood and appreciated, but the episode has a further connection that has not been realized, namely with Odyssey 3. For when Diomedes saves Nestor, he simultaneously saves his own nóstos inasmuch as Nestor is his “homebringer.” The connection of the episode in Iliad 8 with Antilochus’s death is deepened by its further connection with Odyssey 3 through the contrast that is thereby evoked between Diomedes, who will return home {198|199} in Nestor’s care, and Antilochus, who will perish saving his father’s life. The connection between Iliad 8 and Odyssey 3 involves a deliberate reversal of roles in that Nestor, who will bring Diomedes safely home, must first be saved himself. In Iliad 8 Diomedes is the savior. The role reversal is extended by the fact that Nestor must be rescued, not when he functions as Néstōr, “he who brings home,” but when he functions as a “horseman”—as hippóta Néstōr. This is Diomedes’ domain, and if Nestor and Diomedes reenact the twin myth in their nóstos, with Nestor playing the role of the immortal twin, then the same myth is also at play in Iliad 8, where Diomedes dominates in the role of the “warrior horseman.” There is still a role reversal in that Diomedes saves Nestor, but he does so as a warrior. [98]

§2.75 The connection between Iliad 8 and Odyssey 3 goes beyond Diomedes. The real point of Nestor’s account in Odyssey 3 is not that he brought Diomedes home, but that he did not bring Odysseus home. This point is also alluded to in Iliad 8, with a role reversal paralleling that in the case of Nestor and Diomedes. For just as Nestor does not save Odysseus in Odyssey 3 in the context of their nóstos, Odysseus very pointedly does not save Nestor in Iliad 8. When Diomedes sees the old man in trouble, he shouts to Odysseus to halt his shameful flight and help drive Hector back, but Odysseus pays no heed, and dashes on to the ships (Iliad 8.90–98):

This is all that is said about Odysseus, in a brief episode that seems to go nowhere, and to amount to nothing more than a gratuitous slander on this hero’s reputation. [99] But the point of this little episode is to evoke the nóstoi of {200|201} Odyssey 3, for just as Diomedes needs Nestor to complete his nóstos, Odysseus does not. Morever, the suggestion of Odysseus’s cool indifference towards Nestor makes more sense when we realize that the situation is meant to call to mind the way Nestor and Odysseus would one day part from each other on the island of Tenedos in bitter disagreement—neither heeding the other. [100]

§2.76 The episode in Iliad 8 thus alludes to the nóstoi of Odyssey 3 and to the death of Antilochus simultaneously. As the episode proceeds, the relationship between Nestor and Diomedes, which is destined to culminate in their nóstos together, is of primary interest. We have already seen that this relationship is depicted in Iliad 9, when Nestor reminds Diomedes that he is young enough to be his son, and therefore has not reached the “goal” of his words in addressing the Achaean leaders, as Nestor himself then goes on to do. This episode in Iliad 9 depends on the episode in Iliad 8 in that the contrast in ages, which Nestor turns to his advantage in the meeting of the leaders, was first brought up by Diomedes on the battlefield, when he chided Nestor for his old age, his weak attendant, and his slow horses. In such terms does he greet Nestor when, without the help of Odysseus, he comes to Nestor’s rescue by himself (Iliad 8.99–104):

Diomedes then calls Nestor onto his own chariot to see the speed of his horses, which he took from the Trojan Aeneas in battle. [101] At Diomedes’ bidding, Nestor takes the reins and drives straight at Hector, who likewise drives straight at them. Diomedes misses Hector with his spear but he kills Hector’s driver, and Hector must then find another. Before their encounter can resume, which would have had dire consequences for the Trojans, Zeus intervenes by hurling a thunderbolt in front of Diomedes’ chariot, and his horses are brought up short, cowering in fear (Iliad 8.130–136):

The sign from Zeus is unambiguous. It is in fact a direct warning. Nestor, who is able to perceive subtle signs from the gods that others miss, does not {202|203} miss the intent of this one, and he tells Diomedes to turn back and flee: Zeus intends to give glory to Hector today, but some other day, perhaps, he will give glory to them. Diomedes, too, knows what the sign means, for he does not disagree with Nestor’s words. But still he is greatly pained that he must flee, for Hector will boast about it among the Trojans, and Diomedes would rather be swallowed up by the earth than endure that. Diomedes is impassioned, but Nestor prevails by chiding him, saying that the Trojan women whose husbands Diomedes has killed will not believe Hector if he calls him a coward, and with that Nestor turns the horses and retreats (Iliad 8.152–158):

As they flee, Hector taunts Diomedes, just as he feared, and he must listen to himself called a woman who will never take away the wives of the Trojans. Diomedes debates in his heart three times whether to turn back again and fight, but three times Zeus thunders from Mount Ida, giving a sign of victory to the Trojans.

§2.77 When Nestor gets onto Diomedes’ chariot in Iliad 8, and the two of them are paired as horsemen, the episode moves into the domain of Nestor’s oldest traditions, his chariot race against the Epeian twins at Bouprasion. In that race the youthful Nestor, who raced alone, lacked all “restraint,” and he was thus unable to make the turn around the turning post, and he crashed as a result. In Iliad 8 the aged Nestor, with Diomedes at his side, does turn back, and he thus avoids catastrophe. In this reversal there is a balanced pair {203|204} of twins, as it were, and not a single charioteer, but Diomedes represents “incitement” and Nestor, who is far now from his youthful self, represents “restraint.” His “restraint,” however, is not the physical act of holding the reins, although he does that too, but an act of moral persuasion. Nestor calms Diomedes with his words, and this act of “restraining” is what turns them back toward safety.

§2.78 When the youthful Nestor lost control of his chariot, the reins flew from his hands, and the horses careened off the end of the course. This is of course not described directly in Iliad 23, when Nestor speaks of his loss to the twins, but indirectly, when Idomeneus speculates among the spectators about the reason for Eumelos’s disappearance from the race (Iliad 23.465–468):

We have seen that this description, which does not apply to what actually happened to Eumelos, in fact describes what once happened to the youthful Nestor. In Iliad 8, in an episode that is meant to bring Nestor’s youthful race to mind, the aged Nestor again lets the reins fly from his hands when Zeus hurls the thunderbolt in front of Diomedes’ horses (Iliad 8.135–138):

The act of dropping the reins is the same for the youthful and for the aged Nestor, but the cause and result of this act are completely changed in the second case. The youthful Nestor let the reins fly from his hands by flailing with them to gain speed, and the horses careened off the end of the course and crashed once he lost control of them. When the aged Nestor drops the reins the horses have already stopped short, frightened by Zeus’s thunderbolt, and Nestor, with fear in his own heart, addresses Diomedes in order to restrain him and turn him back. The dropped reins are a signal to recall Nestor’s youthful race, and to draw attention to the changes rung on that race in the present episode. [102] Knowing when and how to turn back is the point.

§2.79 Iliad 8, with its allusions to the nóstoi of Nestor and Diomedes (and to that of Odysseus) on the one hand, and to the chariot race of Nestor against the Epeian twins on the other hand, serves as a bridge between Iliad 23, with its chariot race, and Odyssey 3, with its account of the Achaeans’ nóstoi. [103] At the end of my discussion of the chariot race in Iliad 23 I raised the issue of connections between this race and the nóstoi of the Achaeans. I return to this issue now, and begin with Diomedes, the winner of the race. Diomedes wins the race in the games for Patroclus because he has Athena’s help, for she gives him back his whip when it is knocked from his hands by Apollo, and she puts ménos into his horses. [104] In considering Diomedes’ victory over Eumelos, which is really a victory of two against one when Athena’s help is taken into account, I argued that his race is a transformation of the race that the Epeian twins won against Nestor. Athena plays the part of the immortal twin in Diomedes’ victory by providing “incitement” to him and to his horses. But this scheme is also relevant to Diomedes himself and to his nóstos from Troy, for he will not return on his own: he will need the help of Néstōr, the “homebringer.” Thus his race is a deliberate foreshadowing of his nóstos if we are willing to view Athena’s role in the race as a transformation of Nestor’s role in his nóstos. If this is the case, it has the interesting consequence that Nestor figures on both sides in the race for first prize: the youthful Nestor {205|206} lies behind Eumelos, who crashes, and the aged Nestor, whose nóstos is still in the future, lies behind Diomedes’ helper Athena, who plays the immortal twin to Diomedes’ mortal twin in the victory over Eumelos. In this sense the aged Nestor triumphs over the youthful Nestor in the same race. [105]

§2.80 While Nestor is human and Athena is a god, and this difference is never forgotten in the Homeric poems, the two figures do have similar functions to a certain extent. We see this again in the case of Diomedes when Athena mounts his chariot in Iliad 5 and Nestor mounts his chariot in Iliad 8. This parallel, I think, is not an accident. Nor, I think, is the contrast between the two figures, for Athena mounts Diomedes’ chariot to urge him on to attack and wound the god Ares, but Nestor mounts his chariot to prevent him from challenging the clearly demonstrated will of the god Zeus, much as Diomedes is tempted to do so. Behind both figures who ride beside Diomedes on his chariot is the immortal twin, whose role is to provide “incitement.” But in Nestor’s case, although the role of the immortal twin is, so to speak, his by birthright, he has also acquired the role of the mortal twin, and in this episode he provides “restraint.” The contrast with Athena’s role in Iliad 5 has to do with the difference between human and divine, for as Nestor tells Diomedes, a man cannot force Zeus to change his mind, since Zeus is much stronger (Iliad 8.143–144):

§2.81 There is a link between Diomedes’ victory in the chariot race in Iliad 23 and his easy nóstos in Odyssey 3. In both cases he is not alone. But the link is indirect since it involves the transformation of Nestor’s future role as “homebringer” into a role played by the goddess Athena in the race. The link between Diomedes’ nóstos and Iliad 8, on the other hand, is direct. When Nestor turns the horses back to flee, he saves Diomedes from divine wrath, just as he does later, when he flees from Tenedos with Diomedes because he “realized that the god planned evil things.” Since the direct link with {206|207} Diomedes’ nóstos is made in Iliad 8, it does not need to be made again in Iliad 23, when Diomedes wins the race driving the same team of Trojan horses that carried him safely out of battle in Iliad 8. In Iliad 23, instead of having Nestor at his side to help him, Diomedes has the help of Athena from a distance, and this too is not unrelated to his nóstos. For if Nestor, and not Athena, helped him in his nóstos, it was Athena’s wrath that had to be escaped, and Athena’s favor for him, again from a distance, is implied by the fact that he did escape.

§2.82 There is a link between Diomedes’ race in Iliad 23 and his nóstos, but the direct link with his nóstos is provided by Iliad 8, and this must be taken into account first: Iliad 23 does not repeat what Iliad 8 has already laid out, but assumes it. What of the race of Antilochus in Iliad 23? His death is directly alluded to in Iliad 8, just as the nóstos of Diomedes is. In the chariot race, however, he is a victor. Is there a sense in which his failure to return home is implied in his chariot race, victory though it is? Perhaps so, if we bear in mind that Nestor himself is at the center of the events that cause his son’s death—Antilochus dies trying to save his father—and that Nestor is equally involved in his son’s chariot race without quite seeming to be. In analyzing Antilochus’s race I traced the connection from Nestor’s speech of advice to his son’s dangerous maneuver by way of the repeated phrase oudé he lḗthei, which Nestor uses of the skillful charioteer who knows when to press his horses and seize the lead, and oudé me lḗsei, which Antilochus utters when he sees his opportunity to do exactly what Nestor has implicitly advised him to do. Nestor’s responsibility for his son’s fate is the issue here, however muted it remains. Antilochus wins the race, but in a sense he does not, for he must first give up his prize to Menelaus before he is allowed to keep it. [106] The doubt that this casts on Antilochus’s victory is the key point if his race indirectly alludes to his death and failure to return from Troy. We should also perhaps consider the fact that it is Achilles who first proposes to deny Antilochus second prize, though his motivation is not to dishonor Antilochus, but to honor Eumelos. I have already suggested that when Achilles singles Eumelos out for a special prize, his action resonates against the tradition, if it is old, that Eumelos won the chariot race in the games held at Achilles’ own funeral. [107] There is the further question, however, whether Achilles’ action {207|208} also relates to Antilochus. There is both relevance and pathos if Achilles’ proposal to deny Antilochus his victory is taken as an allusion to his death in Troy, for Antilochus is Achilles’ favorite, second only to Patroclus, and the prize in question is in honor of Patroclus’s death. In the “second Nekyia” in Odyssey 24, Agamemnon tells Achilles in the underworld how the Achaeans buried Achilles at his death with the remains of Patroclus, mixing their ashes in the same vessel, while the ashes of Antilochus, whom Achilles honored most after Patroclus died, remained apart (Odyssey 24.76–79):

Because of the parallel between Patroclus and Antilochus in their closeness to Achilles, it is right that there be a suggestion of Antilochus’s fate, which parallels Patroclus’s fate, when Achilles awards the prizes to honor Patroclus’s death. [108] Even more fitting is this suggestion from the standpoint of Nestor, who will involuntarily cause the death of his son, just as he has involuntarily caused the death of Patroclus. But the primary unspoken point in the chariot race concerns Nestor’s connection with the death of Patroclus—these are his funeral games—and not with the death of Antilochus. Hence, for the time being, Antilochus is an apparent victor. [109]

§2.83 Whereas allusions to Antilochus’s fate are indirect in Iliad 23, the allusion to his fate in Iliad 8 is direct. The situation is in this respect much {208|209} the same for Antilochus as for Diomedes. Significantly it is these two who are closest to Nestor and who mean most to him in terms of their return, in the case of Diomedes, or failure to return, in the case of Antilochus. In Iliad 8 the contrast between the death of Antilochus and the return of Diomedes is of primary concern in the episode’s rich interplay of allusions. We thus begin to see that from Nestor’s standpoint there was a need for the episode in Iliad 8. In Iliad 23 it is Nestor’s relation to Patroclus, and to Patroclus’s fate, that is of primary concern in terms of the episode’s hidden poetic agenda. Nestor’s relation to the contrasting fates of Diomedes and Antilochus is thus necessarily of secondary concern. But the fates of Diomedes and Antilochus were not of secondary concern to Nestor himself.

§2.84 Of the four main contestants in the chariot race of Iliad 23, we must still consider the race of Menelaus in relation to his nóstos. Menelaus finishes the race in third place, ahead of only Meriones, who is the worst driver and has the slowest horses (Iliad 23.530–531), and Eumelos, who would have finished first if he had not crashed. Menelaus finishes in the middle of the field of contestants, but his race is regarded as a loss rather than a victory because he is defeated for second prize by Antilochus. The reason for his defeat is that he deliberately holds back when Antilochus passes him on the narrow road. Antilochus’s act, which is one of “incitement,” is couched in terms of nóos in various ways, including his own statement in his apology to Menelaus that the nóos of a young man is “too swift.” Menelaus, who holds back when Antilochus surges ahead, hesitates in other contexts as well. On his nóstos, after leading half the army away from Troy to Tenedos, he falls behind Nestor and Diomedes when they flee from Tenedos. He overtakes them on Lesbos when they pause to seek a sign from the god, and he accompanies them to Geraistos in Euboea, and from there to Cape Sounion. If we compare his nóstos up to this point with his race in Iliad 23, we may say that he is still in the “race,” and if he has no chance of arriving home in Sparta before Diomedes reaches Argos, he has every chance of reaching home in second place after Diomedes. But then the same thing happens that happens in his race, namely he is forced to fall behind. His helmsman dies at Cape Sounion and, eager though he is to pursue his journey, he is detained in order to bury his companion and perform funeral rites; Nestor tells the story in Odyssey 3.284–285:

If the rapid progress of Nestor and Diomedes on their nóstos is due to Nestor’s accurate perception of the correct course and his incitement in pursuing that course through each successive turn along the way, Menelaus falls behind just when further incitement is needed to complete the journey. Menelaus lacks Nestor’s quality of nóos at a critical moment, and this is symbolized by his loss of his helmsman at Cape Sounion, for the helmsman is his ship’s guide, and the helmsman’s name, significantly, is Phróntis (Odyssey 3.282). Menelaus’s loss of Phróntis, whose name in later Greek means “thought, meditation, deliberation,” represents a deficiency in himself as well. [110] Without Phróntis, Menelaus is blown off course by a storm as he rounds Cape Malea. Had he stayed with Nestor, he would have rounded this dangerous cape without incident. In the chariot race it is Nestor’s son Antilochus whose act of nóos Menelaus cannot match and who leaves him behind.

§2.85 Menelaus is blown all the way to Egypt, and he wanders there and in Phoenicia for eight years (Odyssey 4.82) before he is finally able to return home, the last of the Achaeans to do so according to Athena/Mentes (Odyssey 1.286). Menelaus’s nóstos is exceedingly slow in comparison with that of Nestor and Diomedes, and yet he does return home in the end. But if his nóstos is ultimately successful, why is his chariot race regarded as a defeat? The answer to this may lie in the fact that Menelaus races not just for himself, but for himself and Agamemnon at the same time. The two of them cannot of course actually compete together in the same chariot, but both of them are represented in the team of horses that Menelaus drives, one of which is his, the other Agamemnon’s. This curious team is described when Menelaus rises next after Diomedes to enter the race (Iliad 23.293–295):

Whereas Menelaus’s horse is a male, Agamemnon’s is a female, and this fact plays a part in the race. For when Antilochus calls on his horses to overtake Menelaus’s he shames them with the thought of losing to a female (Iliad 23.407–409):

Antilochus singles out Agamemnon’s mare to motivate his own team, and to this extent the mare is a liability in the race, and we may ask whether this fact relates to the nóstoi of the two Atreidai. [111] As far as Agamemnon’s nóstos is concerned, it is a female, his own wife Clytemnestra, who turns his nóstos {211|212} into his destruction. It is the death of Agamemnon that turns Menelaus’s own nóstos, successful though it is in itself, into a failure. The link between Menelaus’s late return and Agamemnon’s death is first established in Odyssey 3, when Telemachus asks Nestor how Agamemnon died, for linked to this question is another question—where was Menelaus? (Odyssey 3.248–249):

In his reply Nestor defends Menelaus’s reputation valiantly, saying that Telemachus himself knows that Aigisthos would have received no burial, funeral rites, or lamentation if Menelaus on his return home had encountered Aigisthos alive (Odyssey 3.254–261). The truth is, however, that Menelaus returned too late not only to defend his brother, but even to avenge him, for Orestes had already slain Aigisthos when Menelaus returned home in the eighth year. He arrived on the very day that Orestes celebrated a funeral for his mother and Aigisthos. For Menelaus himself there is little joy in his own nóstos because of his brother’s murder. In Odyssey 4, when Telemachus admires the splendor of Menelaus’s palace, and Menelaus tells how he gained his possessions during his eight years of travel, he ends by saying that these possessions bring him no joy because while he wandered abroad gathering them his brother was slain (Odyssey 4.90–92):

Menelaus’s nóstos is a failure in his own eyes because of his brother’s untimely death at the hands of his wife; Menelaus’s race seems to foreshadow this failure in the team that he drives, which represents his brother as well as himself, and which in his brother’s case draws attention to what may be called the female factor. [112]

§2.86 The hesitancy that cost Menelaus second prize in the chariot race, and that led to his long return home, continues to characterize him in his domestic life in Sparta. Compared to his wife Helen, who recognizes Telemachus as soon as she lays eyes on him from his similarity to Odysseus, Menelaus is slow to recognize him. Telemachus weeps when Menelaus says that he misses Odysseus most of those who fought at Troy, and Menelaus ponders whether to ask him who his father is or wait for him to say on his own (Odyssey 4.118–119). When Helen enters the room and surmises at once that this is Telemachus, Menelaus also perceives the likeness: οὕτω νῦν καὶ ἐγὼ νοέω, γύναι, ὡς σὺ ἐΐσκεις (Odyssey 4.148). Once Helen has pointed out the likeness, everything falls into place for Menelaus. He now sees many points of similarity to Odysseus, and he understands why mention of Odysseus made Telemachus weep (Odyssey 4.149–154). On his own, however, Menelaus perceived none of this. Helen takes the lead in other ways as well in Odyssey 4, as when she puts a drug in the wine to dull the pain of remembrance and tells a story in praise of Odysseus. Menelaus follows her lead with his own story in Odysseus’s praise (Odyssey 4.219–289). The contrast between Helen and Menelaus is still more sharply drawn in Odyssey 15, when a bird omen appears at the end of a speech of Telemachus; Peisistratos calls on Menelaus to interpret the omen, Menelaus hesitates, and Helen interprets it instead (Odyssey 15.160–173).

§2.87 Menelaus is a follower rather than a leader in the Iliad too in his relationship with Agamemnon. This is perhaps the origin of his characteristic {213|214} hesitancy, for Agamemnon is the commander-in-chief, and Menelaus necessarily follows his brother’s lead. In Iliad 10, with the Trojans camped nearby, Agamemnon and Menelaus both cannot sleep, and each rises from his bed to seek counsel. Agamemnon, who is described first, decides to seek out Nestor’s advice. Menelaus, on the other hand, goes to awaken his brother, whom he finds already up and arming himself (Iliad 10.32–34):

In this situation calling for wise counsel the direction of dependency is clear, with Menelaus seeking out Agamemnon, and Agamemnon seeking out Nestor. Nevertheless it is Menelaus who immediately suggests to Agamemnon the plan that is set in motion in Iliad 10, namely sending a spy against the Trojans (Iliad 10.37–38). The brothers then part to awaken different heroes and call them to council. When Agamemnon awakens Nestor, Nestor prepares to follow him and call others. But first he finds fault with Menelaus for sleeping and letting Agamemnon exert himself at this dangerous pass. When Agamemnon corrects Nestor’s misconception, he says that he is right to blame Menelaus at other times, for he often holds back and does not wish to exert himself, not out of hesitancy or dull-wittedness, but because he waits for Agamemnon’s lead (Iliad 10.120–123):

Menelaus “gives way,” not out of hesitancy or dull-wittedness, but because he needs his brother’s lead. The verb methieî, “gives way,” in Iliad 10.121 brings us back to Menelaus’s chariot race, in which he “willingly gave way” to Telemachus to avoid a crash (Iliad 23.434–435):

The verb methíēmi used of Menelaus in these two different contexts is highly suggestive. [114] What looks like hesitancy and a lack of nóos in Menelaus is due to the fact that he is not used to acting on his own. Menelaus truly acts on his own for the first time at the drunken assembly after the fall of Troy, when he opposes Agamemnon and leaves him behind once and for all. This does not change his character, however, for hesitancy and a nóos that is not fast enough mark his nóstos, when he no longer has his brother’s lead to follow. Menelaus’s chariot race in Iliad 23 anticipates his nóstos, for he is on his own in this too, and at the crucial moment he “gives way.” [115] {215|216}

§2.88 This completes the comparison of the races run by the charioteers of Iliad 23 with their later nóstoi. [116] The connection is strongest for Menelaus, since his nóstos is not alluded to more directly elsewhere in the Iliad, as is the nóstos of Diomedes, and as is also the death of Antilochus in Troy, which denied him a nóstos. As we have seen, the fates of Diomedes and Antilochus are also at issue in Iliad 23, but they play a subordinate role to Nestor’s old race against the Epeian twins, which they in different ways reenact. While Antilochus reenacts the “incitement” that characterized Nestor’s race, Diomedes, with Athena’s help from a distance, reenacts the successful race of the Epeian twins. The remaining contestant, Eumelos, reenacts the youthful race of Nestor himself, and this is the entire focus of Eumelos’s race. We know nothing of his nóstos, and it is unlikely that it concerned the poet of Iliad 23. Eumelos’s role in reenacting the youthful Nestor’s race, which is the great unspoken point of the chariot race, does not compete for our attention with a secondary purpose. [117]

§2.89 Now that we have considered the relationships that connect Iliad 8 and Iliad 23 with Odyssey 3, we should step back briefly and consider the implications of these connections for the relationship between the Iliad and the Odyssey in general. On the one hand, Iliad 8, in its allusions to the nóstoi of Diomedes and Odysseus, seems to presuppose our Odyssey 3. On the other hand, the allusion in Iliad 8 to the death of Antilochus is not to a specific text, so the allusions in Iliad 8 to the nóstoi of Diomedes and Odysseus also need not {216|217} be to a specific text. I leave the issue pending for now; we will return to it in due course. [118]

§2.90 We have now considered most of Nestor’s role in the Odyssey, which is essentially a negative one: Nestor did not bring Odysseus home; worse than that, when Nestor last saw Odysseus they had an angry dispute and parted permanently. This was the plain truth, and however unspoken it is left in Odyssey 3, it is in no way denied. But there are other factors that soften the harshness of what happened. In particular, Telemachus and Peisistratos, the sons of the two heroes who parted angrily, form a bond between them that heals that earlier breach. The presence of Athena, disguised as Mentor, also puts everything in a new perspective.

§2.91 Athena herself arranges for Peisistratos to take her place as Telemachus’s traveling companion (Odyssey 3.368–370). When the two youths leave Pylos for Sparta at the end of Odyssey 3 they together mount the chariot that Nestor has had prepared for them (Odyssey 3.481–484):

The quarrel that separated Nestor and Odysseus, with such dire consequences for Odysseus, is now made up by their sons, and that is the image that we are left with at the end of Odyssey 3, as Peisistratos takes Telemachus on his way. The role that Nestor plays in the nóstos of Odysseus is based on his version of the twin myth, in which he is permanently separated from his brother. So too he is permanently separated from Odysseus at the very moment of his {217|218} nóstos. But the image at the end of Odyssey 3 is one of reintegration, and the chariot in which this reintegration takes place suggests poetically the integration of twins. The quarrel between Nestor and Odysseus has not been undone, for it cannot be, and there are echoes of this quarrel even in the very last that we hear about Nestor in the Odyssey. For so I would interpret Odyssey 15, when Telemachus returns with Peisistratos from Sparta to Pylos, but does not stop to see Nestor before embarking for Ithaca. When Telemachus asks that Peisistratos allow him to do this because of the urgency that he feels to leave, he stresses his friendship with Peisistratos himself, which is based on the earlier friendship of their fathers, and which the journey to Sparta has increased (Odyssey 15.195–198):

It seems significant that the word used of their increased friendship is “oneness of mind” (homophrosúnēisin), for that is what Nestor and Odysseus had while their friendship was intact, and what they lost at the moment of nóstos. That former “oneness of mind” (héna thumòn ékhonte is Nestor’s own phrase) has now been restored in the younger generation. It also seems significant that when Peisistratos grants his companion’s request, his final word should concern Nestor’s anger. Telemachus is worried that Nestor will detain him in order to show him hospitality, so Peisistratos himself performs the obligations of hospitality, giving Telemachus the gifts that he himself received from Menelaus (Odyssey 15.206–207), and urging him to set sail before Nestor hears of his presence. For Peisistratos knows how overbearing Nestor’s spirit is, and that he will come for Telemachus and not return empty-handed; in any case he will be very angry (Odyssey 15.211–214):

That the last word in the Odyssey about Nestor should concern his anger is remarkable, but poetically it is exactly right. Overtly Nestor’s imagined anger has to do with a thwarted desire to show hospitality to the son of Odysseus, but beneath the surface it brings back to mind the role that Nestor played in the return of Odysseus himself, a role that is well summarized by the allusion to his anger. In his own account of events on Tenedos there was of course no mention of Nestor’s anger, and yet, if he was one party to the dispute, anger there must have been; we can judge this by the exchange of harsh words between Menelaus and Agamemnon in the first dispute on the shores of Troy: ὣς τὼ μὲν χαλεποῖσιν ἀμειβομένω ἐπέεσσιν… (Odyssey 3.148). The suppression of any mention of Nestor’s anger in the context where it is the main point, and the resurfacing of that anger at a safe distance, and with a crucial change of context from hostility to hospitality, is in line with the poetic treatment of Nestor in the Iliad. In Iliad 23 it was Nestor’s crash at the turning post in his race against the Epeian twins that was never mentioned directly, but which surfaced more than once indirectly in the chariot race for Patroclus. In the Odyssey the great unspoken event in Nestor’s past is his quarrel with Odysseus, and the hostility that that implied. However brief the hostility, it was the final moment in the relationship between these two heroes, and therefore all important. This final moment must be kept firmly in mind throughout Odyssey 3, and elsewhere in the Odyssey, to appreciate the full dramatic effect of Nestor’s presence in the poem, just as his crash at the turning post must be kept in mind throughout the chariot race of Iliad 23. At the beginning of Odyssey 3 the apprehension that Telemachus feels in approaching and addressing Nestor, which Athena, disguised as Mentor, helps him to overcome, has to do first of all with the coming of age of a young man with little experience of the wider world. But the drama of Telemachus’s reluctance is heightened when we understand just whom he is afraid to approach, and the circumstances under which this figure parted from his father. {219|220}

§2.92 Athena takes charge of Odysseus’s homecoming at the very start of the Odyssey, at the council of gods in Odyssey 1, and her presence in Pylos in Odyssey 3 thus puts everything in a new perspective. It no longer matters that Odysseus split from Nestor the “homebringer,” because a greater power, Athena herself, will bring him home: Athena has, as it were, already taken Nestor’s place as Odysseus’s immortal twin. In Odyssey 3 Athena’s immediate concern is for Odysseus’s son during his journey, which is a smaller version of Odysseus’s own nóstos. Athena’s disguise as the aged Mentor when she accompanies Telemachus derives directly, I think, from the figure of the aged Nestor, the principal figure in Odyssey 3. In order to hear first-hand how Odysseus lost the aged Nestor’s help when Troy fell, Telemachus travels to Pylos with the aged Mentor at his side: what was split apart has thus already been put back together in a new form, as it will be again in the case of Peisistratos and Telemachus at the end of Odyssey 3. Peisistratos replaces Athena/Mentor in the role of Telemachus’s companion, and it is Athena herself who arranges to have him do so. The point in Athena’s case even more than in Peisistratos’s case is the reversal of Nestor’s myth, which is one of separation, in favor of a new and more powerful reintegration. Athena is not an Indo-European twin figure, but the dynamics of her role are those of the Indo-European twin myth, and this is because of Nestor. [119]

§2.93 The name Méntōr was chosen for Athena’s disguise, I think, to echo the name Néstōr: the choice of name was meant to identify the figure from whom her role is borrowed. This idea, suggested in Part 1 above, can now be elaborated further. It is first of all striking that, in both these agent nouns with suffix ‑tōr, a normally intransitive verbal root has a transitive meaning. The primary meaning of Méntōr is “inciter” (root *men- of mémona, “be eager,” ménos, “spirit”), and this meaning clearly evokes Nestor, whether we think of his role in the chariot race of Iliad 23 or his swift homecoming in Odyssey 3: Méntōr, who “makes eager,” parallels Néstōr, who “brings back to life.” [120] The mental aspect of Néstōr, which is summed up in the word nóos, also has a parallel in the name Méntōr, which in the Odyssey is associated with verbs of “remembering” and “reminding,” and thus seems to have the secondary meaning “reminder”; it is because of Néstōr, I {220|221} suggest, that the Odyssey brings in these secondary associations, which are not primary in the name itself. [121]

§2.94 What the name Méntōr lacks altogether is the basic meaning of Néstōr, namely “homebringer.” [122] In Odyssey 15 Athena, no longer disguised as Mentor, still acts as a Méntōr in relation to Telemachus when she visits him openly in Sparta in order “to remind him of his return and to incite him to return”: νόστου ὑπομνήσουσα καὶ ὀτρυνέουσα νέεσθαι (Odyssey 15.3). I take this line as a virtual gloss on the name Méntōr, understood as both “inciter” (otrunéousa) and “reminder” (hupomnḗsousa), and I note the addition of the idea of “return” (in the words nóstou and néesthai) to both meanings to express what the name Néstōr contains in itself.

§2.95 There is a further piece of evidence. The name Méntōr forms a pair with the name Menélaos like such other name pairs as Áktōr/Agélaos, Héktōr/Ekhélaos, and Néstōr/Nehelawos. [123] The gloss of the name Méntōr in Odyssey 15 suggested above seems to be paralleled by a gloss of the name Menélaos, understood as “he who reminds the warfolk,” in Nestor’s account of the Achaeans’ nóstoi in Odyssey 3. If this is the case there is an obvious implication for the name Méntōr, likewise at issue in Odyssey 3. The name Menélaos is usually derived, not from the root *men- of Méntōr, but from the root *men- of {221|222} Greek ménō, “await, withstand,” as in such apparently similar compounds as menedḗios, “withstanding the enemy,” meneptólemos, “withstanding battle,” menekhármēs, “withstanding battle.” [124] But the supposed meaning of Menélaos, “he who withstands the warfolk,” has a problem: in Homer the word laós, by a wide margin, refers to one’s own “warfolk,” and not to the enemy’s; this is also the case in such names as Agélaos, “he who leads the warfolk,” Ekhélaos, “he who protects the warfolk,” and Nehelawos, “he who brings the warfolk back,” and it should be the case in the name Menélaos as well. [125]

§2.96 After the fall of Troy Menelaus “reminds the warfolk” of their “return home” when he quarrels with Agamemnon over the very issue of “return.” As Nestor puts it, “Menelaus urged all the Achaeans to remember their nóstos” (Odyssey 3.141–144):

§2.97 In the phrase anṓgei pántas Akhaioùs…mimnḗskesthai, “he urged all the Achaeans to remember,” the allusion to the meaning of Menelaus’s name, “he who reminds the warfolk,” is self-evident. [126] But it is also clear that nóstou, {222|223} “their homecoming,” must be added to “remember” to make Menelaus’s name relevant to his own twin myth in the context of the Greeks’ nóstoi. This additional element does not need to be specified in Nestor’s case when he replays his twin myth with Odysseus on Tenedos, for his name by itself means “the homebringer.”

§2.98 I come back to the point that the name Néstōr is central in Odyssey 3, and that the name Méntōr is meant to echo it: the two names are identical in shape, and the semantics of Néstōr are approximated in Méntōr, especially when the related name Menélaos, with its explicit connection to the idea of a nóstos in Odyssey 3, is taken into account. [127] {223|224}

§2.99 Mentor for Athena is just a disguise. In her own persona she is in control of events, and Nestor, a mere mortal, does not rival her superior power. In Odyssey 3 much attention is given to the transfer of responsibility for Odysseus from Nestor (he did not bring Odysseus home) to Athena (she will). The theme is introduced with references to Athena’s care for Odysseus at Troy and the possibility that she may bring him home even now. Since Athena herself is present in disguise, all of this is highly ironic. Telemachus wishes that the gods would give him power to defeat his mother’s suitors, but says that the gods have not granted this lot either to him or to his father. Nestor counters his pessimism with the thought that the suitors may yet be punished, either by a returning Odysseus, or by Telemachus himself if Athena loves him as much as she openly loved and cared for Odysseus at Troy (Odyssey 3.216–224):

Telemachus refuses to believe that this will happen, even if the gods should wish it, and Athena/Mentor rebukes him sharply for his attitude (Odyssey 3.230–231):

When Athena finishes her mission in Pylos and flies off in the form of a bird, Nestor recognizes her at once, and realizes that Telemachus does indeed have the same goddess to protect him that his father did at Troy (Odyssey 3.371–379). Athena’s presence is as hopeful for Odysseus and his fate as it is for Telemachus, for she herself said shortly before that a god could easily save a man even from far away. But this implication is left unstated, for Nestor has more immediate thoughts in his mind. He prays to the goddess who has just visited him to give “good fame” to himself and his family, and he promises to sacrifice an unbroken heifer with gilded horns to her (Odyssey 3.380–384). Athena hears his prayer, and most of the rest of Odyssey 3 is devoted to the honor that Nestor pays her. When they go to bed at night, it is to Athena that Nestor makes his libation and prayer (Odyssey 3.393–394). When morning comes, the promised heifer is sacrificed in full ritual splendor, and the process is described in elaborate detail (Odyssey 3.404–474). In the course of the sacrifice Nestor “prays much to Athena” for yet a third time (Odyssey 3.445–446). The great honor paid to Athena at the end of Odyssey 3 balances the scene at the beginning of the book, when Telemachus and Athena arrive in Pylos in the middle of a sacrifice to Poseidon. The shift from Poseidon to Athena heightens the attention on Athena, without dishonoring Poseidon. There has also been another shift in Odyssey 3, and that is from Nestor to Athena as “homebringer” for Odysseus. This is a shift from human to divine, and the change of level is what is brought out in Nestor’s worship of Athena at the end of the book. Odysseus, despite his long absence, has a greater power on his side now than Nestor, with whom he quarreled and split to initiate his long absence. The shift from Nestor to Athena does not dishonor Nestor, although that possibility is present throughout Odyssey 3 because of the negativity of Nestor’s role in the nóstos of Odysseus. Perhaps it is to counter this possibility that Nestor explicitly prays for “good fame” (kléos esthlón) as soon as he recognizes Athena, and that she hears his prayer (Odyssey 3.380–381, 385). {225|227}

Footnotes