Odyssey 3.165 · Book 3, lines 165–167
Nestor and Diomedes flee
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αὐτὰρ ἐγὼ σὺν νηυσὶν ἀολλέσιν, αἵ μοι ἕποντο, φεῦγον, ἐπεὶ γίγνωσκον, ὃ δὴ κακὰ μήδετο δαίμων. φεῦγε δὲ Τυδέος υἱὸς ἀρήιος, ὦρσε δʼ ἑταίρους.
But I, with the close-gathered ships that followed me, kept fleeing on, since I knew that indeed the god was plotting evils. And the warlike son of Tydeus fled too, and urged on his comrades.
Word by word
The setting
Nestor keeps to his own course. He and Diomedes, the warlike son of Tydeus, do not turn back — reading the god's intent, they press on for home.
A note on this passage
Nestor sets himself and Diomedes apart: they did not turn back. Keeping their ships in a tight cluster, they ran for home, because Nestor could see what the others could not — that a god was devising evil. The warlike son of Tydeus fled at his side, rousing his own men.
The undercurrent is the shape of Nestor's wisdom. In the Iliad these are front-rank fighters; here survival is a matter of reading the sky in time and not lingering to argue. Nestor is telling Telemachus, in effect, how he lived to grow old — he knew when the gods had turned, and he went. It is counsel disguised as memory, which is how the old man teaches.
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