Nestor

King of Pylos and oldest of the Achaean leaders at Troy — Homer gives him an Argonautic-generation behind him, with memories of the Lapiths against the Centaurs at Pirithous's wedding and of his own Pylian wars against the Eleans and the *Molione*. He speaks the *Iliad*'s longest didactic speeches: trying to settle the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon in book 1, urging Patroclus's intervention in book 11. In the *Odyssey*'s third book Telemachus visits Pylos to ask him about his father's fate, and the old king receives him with hospitality and a sacrifice of bulls to Poseidon on the beach.

Associated Places