Nestor
Nestor EuropeThe elder statesman of the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was ‘the master of the courteous word, the clear-voiced orator’, who tried to reconcile the enraged Achilles to Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Greek host, when they fell out on the plain of Troy.
Said to have lived to a very great age, Nestor was the son of Neleus, who assumed power in Messenia and built a palace at Pylos. For Homer the generosity of Pylos was renowned, guests ‘ever finding their golden cups brimming with wine’: modern archaeology has perhaps found some evidence of this legendary wealth, in the form of innumerable drinking vessels and the extensive lists of provisions used at sacrificial feasts. When at Athena's instigation Odysseus' son Telemachus arrived by boat, Homer tells how he encountered King Nestor on shore with his followers sacrificing eighty-one ‘jet black bulls to Poseidon, the earth-shaker, god of the sable locks’. The Linear B...
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