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[591] The site of Nestor's Pylos was disputed from the earliest days between three cities of the name in W. Peloponnesos, one in Elis, one in Messenia (the modern Old Navarino), and one between the two in Triphylia. The present passage, and the localities named in Nestor's narrative, 11.670 ff., seem clearly in favour of the Triphylian, which lay near the Alpheios. So too the mention of Alpheios in 5.545 points in the same direction. On the other hand, the journey of Telemachos and Peisistratos from Pylos to Sparta with Pherai as a halfway halt, in Od. 3.485, Od. 4.1, is only consistent with the Messenian Pylos; and the epithet “ἠμαθόεις” implies a situation on the sea-shore, while both the Elean and Triphylian towns were in hilly places. So again the legends of the migration of the Minyan Neleus from Thessaly all take him to Triphylia; yet Pindar speaks of him as “Μεσσάνιος γέρων”, and the Messenian site was clearly that generally accepted by the fifth century. It is natural to suppose that, so far as the legends may have a historical basis, the Triphylian Pylos was originally the home of Nestor, but that, in consequence perhaps of the Aitolian invasion, which took place in the W. Peloponnesos about the same time as the Dorian in the E. and supplanted the Epeians by the later Eleians, the Neleid clan were driven southward out of Triphylia, and took with them their legends and local names to a new home in Messenia. Some hypothesis of the sort seems required to account for the frequency of duplicate names in the region. The Homeric poems then contain traces of both the older and newer state of things. See M. and R. on Od. 3.4, K. O. Müller Orchomenos pp. 357 ff., Strabo viii. 339 ff., where the problem is fully discussed. So far as they can be identified, all the towns here named are Triphylian, and Messenia is entirely ignored, unless with the scholia we take Messe (582), named among the towns of Lakonia, to mean Messene. But Paus.iii. 25. 9 testifies to a Messe near Tainaron, evidently the town here mentioned, though Strabo viii. 364 seems not to know of it. Christ has suggested that the list of Messenian towns named in 9.149-56 may come from a lost part of the Catalogue dealing with Messenia. For the remaining sites see Frazer: Arene iii. 481, “Αἰπύ” (Aipeia) iii. 448, Kyparisseïs iii. 462, Helos iii. 380, Dorion iii. 445, Oichalia iii. 408.

The Iliad, edited, with apparatus criticus, prolegomena, notes, and appendices. Walter Leaf. London. Macmillan. 1900.

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