Odyssey 3.31 · Book 3, lines 31–33
They come to Nestor's shore-feast
Read the full text in our reader
ἷξον δʼ ἐς Πυλίων ἀνδρῶν ἄγυρίν τε καὶ ἕδρας, ἔνθʼ ἄρα Νέστωρ ἧστο σὺν υἱάσιν, ἀμφὶ δʼ ἑταῖροι δαῖτʼ ἐντυνόμενοι κρέα τʼ ὤπτων ἄλλα τʼ ἔπειρον.
They came to the gathering and seats of the Pylian men, where Nestor sat with his sons; and around him his companions, making ready the feast, were roasting some meat and spitting other.
Word by word
The setting
Telemachus and his companion (Athena in the shape of Mentor) have sailed into Pylos and found Nestor's people on the beach, in the middle of a great sacrifice to Poseidon. They walk up to where the old king is seated among his sons.
A note on this passage
Plain arrival, told through the machinery of a feast. The travelers reach the Pylian assembly on the shore and find it already at work: the king enthroned among his sons, the companions busy at the meat. Homer gives the scene in its verbs of preparation, so the reader arrives as a guest arrives — into an event already in motion.
The undercurrent is order. Nestor sits at the center with his own sons ringed around him, the household intact and functioning. After two books inside Odysseus's broken hall, where sons are missing and the meat is devoured by intruders, this is the first sight of a house that works — the standard against which Ithaca's disorder will be measured.
Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.
Open Odyssey 3.31 in the full reader
Always open passages in the reader
From the Great Library
You are reading a page of the Odyssey — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.
The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.
Also on our shelves:
Odyssey 3.31 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/odyssey/3.31/