In Greek mythology, Nestor (Νέστωρ, Νέστωρ ) of Gerênia was the son of Neleus, the King of Pylos, and Chloris. He became king after Heracles killed Neleus and all of Nestor's brothers and sisters.

Picture 37 of the Ambrosian Iliad, Nestor and Patroclus.

Biography

Nestor was an Argonaut, helped fight the centaurs, and participated in the hunt for the Calydonian Boar. He and his sons Antilochus and Thrasymedes fought on the side of Greece in the Trojan War. Though Nestor was already very old when the war began, he was noted for his bravery and speaking abilities. In the Iliad he often gives advice to the younger warriors, and advises Agamemnon and Achilles to reconcile. He is too old to engage in combat himself, but he leads the Pylian troops, riding his chariot, and one of his horses is killed by an arrow shot by Paris. He also had a solid gold shield. Homer frequently calls him by the epithet "the Gerenian horseman." At the funeral games of Patroclus Nestor advises Antilochus on how to win the chariot race. Antilochus was later killed in battle by Memnon.

Although Homer clearly intends his readers to perceive Nestor as an "elder statesman"-type figure worthy of respect, there are occasional flashes of humor at Nestor's expense in the Iliad, as any advice he gives to the other combatants typically serves as a pretext for his first providing his listeners with a garrulous, long-winded exposition of his own past glorious feats in similar circumstances. Homer never actually calls Nestor a bore, but the reader is left with the impression that Homer considers him a bore nonetheless.

In the Odyssey, Nestor has safely returned to Pylos, and Odysseus's son Telemachus travels there to inquire about the fate of his father. Nestor receives Telemachus kindly and entertains him lavishly as a guest, but is unable to furnish any information on his father's fate. Nestor's wife Eurydice and their remaining living sons appear in the Odyssey as well—Echephron, Stratius, Perseus, Aretus, Thrasymedes, and Pisistratus. They also had a daughter, Polycaste. Here too, Homer's admiration of Nestor is tempered by a bit of humor at his expense, as Telemachus, having returned to Nestor's home from a visit to Helen of Troy and Menelaus (where he has sought further information on his father's fate), urges Pisistratus to let Telemachus board his vessel immediately to return home rather than being subjected to a further dose of Nestor's rather expansive sense of hospitality.

In James Joyce's Ulysses, Nestor is represented by the figure of the schoolmaster Garret Deasy.

The cave of Nestor

He'd gone     
to Hades, so now Geranian horseman Nestor,
protector of Achaeans, sat on those stones,
a sceptre in his hand.  His sons came from their rooms
and gathered round him in a throng - Echephron,
Stratius, Perseus, Aretus, and godlike Thrasymedes.
Homer Odyssey 3, 410

Images

Nestor and his sons sacrifice to Poseidon on the beach at Pylos. Meleager Painter, Attic red-figure calyx-krater, 400-380 BC

References

Iliad I, 248; II, 370; IV, 293.

Odyssey III, 157, 343.

Margaret W. Musgrove, Nestor's Centauromachy and the Deceptive Voice of Poetic Memory (Ovid Met. 12.182-535) , Classical Philology, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 223-231