Odyssey 3.439 · Book 3, lines 439–443
The attendants take their places
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βοῦν δʼ ἀγέτην κεράων Στρατίος καὶ δῖος Ἐχέφρων. χέρνιβα δέ σφʼ Ἄρητος ἐν ἀνθεμόεντι λέβητι ἤλυθεν ἐκ θαλάμοιο φέρων, ἑτέρῃ δʼ ἔχεν οὐλὰς ἐν κανέῳ πέλεκυν δὲ μενεπτόλεμος Θρασυμήδης ὀξὺν ἔχων ἐν χειρὶ παρίστατο βοῦν ἐπικόψων.
Stratios and noble Echephron led the ox by the horns. And Aretos came for them from the chamber, bringing lustral water in a flowered basin, in the other hand he held barley grains in a basket; and Thrasymedes, staunch in war, holding a sharp axe in his hand, stood ready by the ox to fell it.
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The setting
The sacrifice assembles. Nestor's grown sons take their appointed roles: two lead the heifer by the horns, another brings the holy water and the barley from within, and a fourth stands by with the axe.
A note on this passage
The rite finds its cast. Two of Nestor's sons take the ox by the horns, Aretos fetches the lustral water in its decorated basin and the barley in its basket, and Thrasymedes waits with a whetted axe. It is the standard Greek sacrifice executed step by exact step, every vessel and tool named — the poem doubling as a manual of cult, and a family liturgy, since the officiants are all the old king's children.
One word rubs against the scene: μενεπτόλεμος, 'staunch in battle,' the fixed war-epithet Homer hangs on Thrasymedes. Here the battle-hardened man lifts his blade over a farm animal in a quiet courtyard. The formula, minted for the fighting at Troy, keeps its heroic weight even bent to a butcher's chore — the gap between the phrase and the moment is the poem's own texture.
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