Odyssey 3.109 · Book 3, lines 109–112
There they lie: the roll of the dead
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Nestor — ἔνθα μὲν Αἴας κεῖται ἀρήιος, ἔνθα δʼ Ἀχιλλεύς, ἔνθα δὲ Πάτροκλος, θεόφιν μήστωρ ἀτάλαντος, ἔνθα δʼ ἐμὸς φίλος υἱός, ἅμα κρατερὸς καὶ ἀμύμων, Ἀντίλοχος, πέρι μὲν θείειν ταχὺς ἠδὲ μαχητής·
There lies warlike Ajax, there Achilles, there Patroclus, a counselor equal to the gods, and there my dear son, at once strong and blameless, Antilochus, beyond others swift at running and a fighter.
Word by word
The setting
Nestor names the great Achaean dead of Troy, each marked by the tolling word ‘there’ (ἔνθα): Ajax, Achilles, Patroclus — and, last, his own son Antilochus, praised as swift-footed and a fighter.
A note on this passage
A short catalogue of the fallen, held together by the tolling “there … there … there.” Nestor calls the roll of the greatest names of the Iliad — Ajax, Achilles, Patroclus — and then, with the very same word, lays his own child among them.
The undercurrent is the turn from public to private. Nestor is reciting the shared, Panhellenic dead when the list suddenly becomes a father's: “my dear son… Antilochus.” The old man who is about to counsel a fatherless boy is himself carrying a son's grave. The Iliad's heroes are already gone, and their fame is now Nestor's burden to keep — alongside his own.
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