Odyssey 3.118 · Book 3, lines 118–120
Nine years of wiles, and one unmatched mind
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Nestor — εἰνάετες γάρ σφιν κακὰ ῥάπτομεν ἀμφιέποντες παντοίοισι δόλοισι, μόγις δʼ ἐτέλεσσε Κρονίων. ἔνθʼ οὔ τίς ποτε μῆτιν ὁμοιωθήμεναι ἄντην
For nine years we stitched trouble for them, busy about it with every kind of wile, and hardly did the son of Cronos bring it to pass. There no one ever could be matched in counsel face to face …
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The setting
Nestor compresses the whole siege into a single figure: for nine years the Achaeans wove trouble for Troy by every kind of cunning, and only barely did Zeus bring it to fulfillment. The last line begins to turn, at last, toward the one man Telemachus asked about.
A note on this passage
The nine years of the war, folded into two lines: the Achaeans “stitched” trouble for Troy by every device, and even so Zeus brought the end about only with difficulty. Nestor makes the long siege a labor of craft rather than force.
The undercurrent is the word waiting just offstage. “Every kind of wile” (παντοίοισι δόλοισι) is the method of the whole war — and cunning, dólos, is Odysseus's own element. The sentence spills past the block's edge toward the claim that in μῆτις, sheer wit, no one could stand level with him. Nestor is circling back, at last, to the man the boy came to hear about.
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