"Now," said he, "that our guests
have done their dinner, it will be best to ask them who they are.
Who, then, sir strangers, are you, and from what port have you
sailed? Are you traders? Or do you sail the seas as rovers with your
hand against every man, and every man's hand against
you?"
Telemakhos answered boldly, for
Athena had given him courage to ask about his father and get himself
a good name [kleos].
"Nestor," said he, "son of Neleus,
honor to the Achaean name, you ask whence we come, and I will tell
you. We come from Ithaca under Neritum, and the matter about which I
would speak is of private not public import. I seek news
[kleos] of my unhappy father Odysseus, who is said to
have sacked the town of Troy in company with yourself. We know what
fate befell each one of the other heroes who fought at Troy, but as
regards Odysseus heaven has hidden from us the knowledge even that he
is dead at all, for no one can certify us in what place he perished,
nor say whether he fell in battle on the mainland, or was lost at sea
amid the waves of Amphitrite. Therefore I am suppliant at your knees,
if haply you may be pleased to tell me of his melancholy end, whether
you saw it with your own eyes, or heard it from some other traveler,
for he was a man born to trouble. Do not soften things out of any
pity for me, but tell me in all plainness exactly what you saw. If my
brave father Odysseus ever did you loyal service, either by word or
deed, when you Achaeans were harassed at the district
[dêmos] of the Trojans, bear it in mind now as
in my favor and tell me truly all."
"My friend," answered Nestor,
"you recall a time of much sorrow to my mind, for the brave Achaeans
suffered much both at sea, while privateering under Achilles, and in
that district [dêmos] when fighting before the
great city of king Priam. Our best men all of them fell there - Ajax,
Achilles, Patroklos peer of gods in counsel, and my own dear son
Antilokhos, a man singularly fleet of foot and in fight valiant. But
we suffered much more than this; what mortal tongue indeed could tell
the whole story? Though you were to stay here and question me for
five years, or even six, I could not tell you all that the Achaeans
suffered, and you would turn homeward weary of my tale before it
ended. Nine long years did we try every kind of stratagem, but the
hand of heaven was against us; during all this time there was no one
who could compare with your father in subtlety - if indeed you are
his son. I can hardly believe my eyes - and you talk just like him
too - no one would say that people of such different ages could speak
so much alike. He and I never had any kind of difference from first
to last neither in camp nor council, but in singleness of heart and
purpose [noos] we advised the Argives how all might be
ordered for the best.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.