Odyssey 3.210 · Book 3, line 210

A second reply-formula turns the floor back to Nestor. The verse is one of the most repeated lines in the poem, the fixed frame that introduces the old king whenever he speaks: ‘the Gerenian horseman Nestor.’

The epithets are doing steady work. ‘Horseman’ recalls the warrior Nestor once was; ‘Gerenian’ roots him in his own country. In a scene where a young man has just confessed his helplessness, the poem answers with the fixed image of the aged, settled, authoritative host — the very figure of an elder about to give a younger man counsel he cannot yet supply himself.

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