Nestor

Who He Is

Nestor is the elder of the Achaean army, son of Neleus, chief of the Pylians, whose voice flowed sweeter than honey from his tongue. He has watched two generations pass and speaks with the authority of one who lived among men better than those of today. He no longer fights as his son Antilochus does, and he knows it: he accepts that the privilege of the old is counsel. It is he who arranges the battle lines, proposes the burial mound and the wall, advises the kings, and sends the embassy to Achilles. The poem shows him always where speech can avert a disaster, and also where speech is not enough.

Trajectory

In Book I, when Agamemnon and Achilles quarrel, Nestor rises to calm them. He gives reason to both sides, and for that very reason he fails: each hears only the half that favors him.

In Book II, the Dream that Zeus sends to Agamemnon takes the figure of Nestor, the elder the king most respects. In the council, Nestor accepts the dream because of the position of the one who recounts it: if any other Achaean had told it, they would say it is a lie and withdraw from him even more; but now it was seen by the one who declares himself the best of the Achaeans. After the stampede, he rebukes the army, which talks like children, and says that no one should return home before lying with the wife of a Trojan, avenging the struggles and groans of Helen. He advises dividing the men by tribes and clans, so that they can know who is a bad chief, who is a coward, and whether the city resists by the will of the gods or by the incompetence of men.

In Book IV, Nestor arranges the battle lines: cavalry in front, infantry behind as a rampart, and the weak in the middle, so that each one fights out of necessity. His son Antilochus is the first to kill. Agamemnon wishes that the old man's knees would keep pace with his spirit, and Nestor replies that the gods do not give everything to men at once: if once I was young, now old age follows me. Even so, I will stand among the horsemen and command them with counsel and words, for that is the privilege of the old.

In Book VI, he shouts to the Argives that no one should lag behind in stripping the dead: first kill, then strip the corpses at leisure.

In Book VII, when the Achaeans fall silent before Hector's challenge, Nestor rises and shames them, invoking someone absent: if old Peleus heard you all cowering, he would pray to die. He recounts how, the youngest of all, he killed Ereuthalion when no one dared, and nine chiefs rise. It is Nestor who orders the lot drawn and shakes the helmet. At the council table, he proposes stopping the war at dawn, gathering the dead, raising a common tomb, high towers, gates, and a deep ditch.

In Book VIII, only Nestor is left facing Hector, because his wounded horse holds him fast. Diomedes lifts him into the chariot, and Nestor reads Zeus's thunderbolt: no man holds back the thought of Zeus; today the glory is Hector's, tomorrow perhaps theirs. Diomedes accepts the reason and argues only over the price, the phrase that Hector will say of him, and Nestor answers with the widows of the men Diomedes killed.

In Book IX, after the flight proposed by Agamemnon, Nestor praises Diomedes, but says that he has not reached the end of the matter; he orders guards placed in the trench and advises a banquet for the elders. There he reminds the king that he had warned him when he took Briseis, but the king yielded to his spirit and dishonored a man whom the immortals had honored. He proposes to appease Achilles with gifts and gentle words, and names the embassy: Phoenix in front, then Ajax and Odysseus.

In Book X, Agamemnon seeks him out at night, hoping to draw a plan from him. Nestor, lying beside his armor, answers that Zeus will not fulfill all the plans that Hector now hopes for, and that Hector will suffer even greater cares if Achilles changes his heart. He wakes the chiefs, kicks Diomedes, who protests, and replies that danger lies on the edge of a razor. He proposes a volunteer to spy on the Trojans, with the reward of fame and a black ewe from each captain.

In Book XI, he leads the wounded Machaon to the ships. Achilles, from the stern, sees him and sends Patroclus to ask who it is. In his tent, Nestor lists the wounded chiefs and asks whether Achilles wants to wait until the ships burn. He recounts a war of his youth against the Epeians, in which, without horses, he killed Mulius with Athena's help, and concludes that Achilles will rejoice alone in his own excellence and will weep later. He reminds Patroclus of Menoetius's advice and proposes that Achilles send him at the head of the Myrmidons, in Achilles' armor, so that the Trojans will take him for Achilles.

In Book XIV, Nestor hears the outcry, leaves his tent, and finds the Achaean wall lying on the ground. He finds Agamemnon, Odysseus, and Diomedes, the three of them wounded, and tells the king that the worst has already come to pass and that it is not right to return to the fight, because the wounded are of no use in battle. He proposes to deliberate. In Book XV, when the Trojans take the wall, Nestor raises his hands to the sky and asks Zeus to remember the offerings of the Achaeans. Zeus thunders at hearing the old man's prayer, but the Trojans take the thunder as a sign in their favor. Nestor urges the Achaeans by their fathers, sons, and absent wives.

In Book XIX, he is one of those who stay with Achilles after the assembly, to console him.

In Book XXIII, before the chariot race, he teaches his son Antilochus, who has the slowest horses, that the woodcutter and the helmsman are worth more for their skill than for their strength, and he marks the goal, a dry stump between two white stones. Achilles gives him the unclaimed cup, in memory of Patroclus, because the old man will no longer fight with his fists or wrestle, nor throw the spear, nor run. Nestor accepts gladly, recalling the days when he won at the games of Amarynceus.

Themes Embodied

Nestor embodies Honor and Reputation in the sense of the elder who measures it by what will be said: he invokes Peleus, the widows, Hector's phrase, the shame of returning empty-handed. He embodies War from the side of counsel, of formation, of the burial mound and the wall. And he embodies Fate and Free Will in the way he reads Zeus, the lightning and the thunder, in order to accept the limit without denying courage.

Nestor's counsel is sensible and almost always gives reason to more than one side, and for that reason it does not always prevail: in Book I each hears the half that favors him. When it does prevail, it is because the listener is already halfway there. Nestor decides by what he sees, the lightning, the fallen wall, the wounded man in the tent, and he places courage within time: today it is Hector's, tomorrow it may not be. In Book XI, the same skill at persuasion leads Patroclus down a path that the narrator has already marked as the beginning of his downfall, and the poem leaves open whether the suggestion of the armor is prudent or imprudent.

Relationships

• Agamemnon: the king who respects him and whom he advises, rebukes, and confronts.
• Achilles: the man to whom he sends the embassy and whom he speaks to harshly in Book XI.
• Patroclus: the young man whom he reminds of Menoetius's advice and whose armor he proposes.
• Diomedes: the chief who rescues him in Book VIII and whom he wakes with a kick in Book X.
• Odysseus: the other counselor, with whom he shares the assembly of Book II.
• Zeus: the god whose lightning and thunder he reads.
• Hector: the adversary before whom he stands in Book VIII.
• Antilochus: the son, who first kills in Book IV and is Nestor's pupil in Book XXIII.