Nestor's Tales — Pylos (Nestor) (Πύλος), landfall 2 of 5 on the search of telemachus
Homer's Odyssey, Book III. Nestor recounts the heroes' returns. Traditional location: Palace of Nestor, Ano Englianos, Messenia, Greece.
Telemachus lands at dawn on the beach of Pylos, where old Nestor — the only great captain to come home swiftly and safely — is sacrificing bulls to Poseidon with all his people.
Nestor tells what he knows: how the victorious Greeks quarrelled and split after the sack of Troy, half sailing early, half lingering; and above all the terrible homecoming of Agamemnon — welcomed with a feast that was a trap, cut down in his own hall by Aegisthus and his own queen, and avenged years later by his son Orestes. The lesson for Telemachus is pointed: a son must stand up for his father's house.
Of Odysseus, Nestor knows nothing — but he sends the prince on to Sparta, to Menelaus, last of the heroes to return, with his own son Pisistratus as companion.
Nine bulls for the earth-shaker
Dawn raises Pylos: the whole population is on the beach in nine companies of five hundred, sacrificing nine black bulls to Poseidon — a kingdom at prayer to exactly the god who hates Telemachus' father. The travellers have arrived mid-festival.
Telemachus hangs back at the gangplank, tongue-tied — how does one address a legendary king? Athena-as-Mentor pushes him forward with the line every young person needs: some things you will think of yourself, and a god will supply the rest. Nestor's son Pisistratus welcomes them with wine and a prayer — handing the cup first to the older guest, a courtesy to the disguised goddess that Homer lets us savour.
Nestor remembers
Nestor, tamer of horses, sailed home swift and safe and has reigned three generations of men. He looks at the young stranger and sees the point at once — your speech is his speech; I could be listening to Odysseus. No one at Troy, he says, could match your father in cunning; he and I never once spoke on different sides in council.
But of the homecoming he knows only fragments: the quarrel of the sons of Atreus after the sack, the fleet splitting, his own swift run home. Of Odysseus — nothing, in ten years. He sends the boy on by land to Sparta, to Menelaus, last of the heroes to return, lending his own chariot and his own son for the road.
The palace is real: The 'Palace of Nestor' at Ano Englianos above the Bay of Navarino is the best-preserved Mycenaean palace in Greece — throne room, hearth, magazines, and a famous painted bathtub that guides delight in matching to Homer: it is in this house that Nestor's daughter Polycaste bathes Telemachus. Its Linear B archive even records the place's name: pu-ro, Pylos.
The fleet divides
(Told by Nestor)
Nestor's tale begins where the Odysseus journey begins — the smoking ruin of Troy. Zeus, angered by outrages in the sack, set the brothers quarrelling: Menelaus for sailing at once, Agamemnon for staying to sacrifice. The assembly, called drunk at sunset, split down the middle.
Half the fleet sailed at dawn; half stayed. Of those who sailed, some turned back. Odysseus himself, Nestor remembers, put about and returned to Agamemnon — loyalty, or caution, that cost him the safe swift passage Nestor caught. Homecomings, the old man says, are decided by the gods at the moment of departure.
The king comes home
(Told by Nestor)
The greatest king of the Greeks came home to a feast. Aegisthus — who had spent the war years seducing Queen Clytemnestra in an empty land — posted a watchman a year in advance, met Agamemnon with honours, and led him to the banquet.
He killed him at the table, Homer says elsewhere, as a man kills an ox at the manger. Not in battle, after ten years of battles; in his own hall, at his own homecoming dinner. Every returning captain in the Odyssey sails in the shadow of this story — it is why Athena tells even Odysseus: do not bring your ship home openly.
The lord of men
(Told by Nestor)
Agamemnon, lord of men, commander of a thousand ships, dead on his own floor among his slaughtered companions — the anti-homecoming, the nostos inverted.
In the underworld, his shade tells Odysseus the scene from inside: the dying men around the wine-bowl, the floor smoking with blood, Cassandra's scream, and his wife turning away without closing his eyes. The Odyssey holds this image up beside Penelope deliberately: two queens, two absent kings, two utterly different endings.
Orestes' example
(Told by Nestor)
Seven years Aegisthus ruled golden Mycenae with the queen at his side. In the eighth came Orestes — raised in exile, returned a man — and killed his father's murderer, and buried mother and usurper in one mound.
Nestor does not tell the story idly. All Greece rang with Orestes' fame, he says, looking at his guest: and you, my friend — tall and fine as you are — be brave, so that men yet unborn may speak well of you. It is the Telemachy's whole lesson in one sentence: the son is the keeper of the father's honour.