Odyssey 3.253 · Book 3, line 253
The old king takes up the question
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τὸν δʼ ἠμείβετʼ ἔπειτα Γερήνιος ἱππότα Νέστωρ·
Then the Gerenian horseman Nestor answered him:
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The setting
Telemachus has asked how Agamemnon was killed. The old king takes up the question — the formulaic line that introduces his long reply.
A note on this passage
A single verse, and pure formula: the line that hands the floor from the young questioner to the old king. 'Gerenian horseman Nestor' is his fixed title, the same each time he speaks, the machinery an oral poet leans on to build a hexameter.
Yet the formula is not idle here. Telemachus has just asked about a murder, and the answer will run on for eighty lines, the longest thing Nestor says. The measured epithet slows the moment down, seating the old horseman in his authority before he opens the grim story of Agamemnon's house. The pause is the poem drawing breath.
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