Odyssey 3.69 · Book 3, lines 69–74
Nestor's question: guests or pirates?
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Nestor — νῦν δὴ κάλλιόν ἐστι μεταλλῆσαι καὶ ἐρέσθαι ξείνους οἱ τινές εἰσιν, ἐπεὶ τάρπησαν ἐδωδῆς. ὦ ξεῖνοι, τίνες ἐστέ; πόθεν πλεῖθʼ ὑγρὰ κέλευθα; ἤ τι κατὰ πρῆξιν ἦ μαψιδίως ἀλάλησθε οἷά τε ληιστῆρες ὑπεὶρ ἅλα, τοί τʼ ἀλόωνται ψυχὰς παρθέμενοι κακὸν ἀλλοδαποῖσι φέροντες;
Now it is more fitting to inquire and to ask the strangers — who they are — since they have had their fill of food. O strangers, who are you? From where do you sail the watery ways? Is it on some errand, or do you wander at random, like pirates over the sea, who rove about staking their own lives, bringing evil to strangers?
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The setting
The meal finished, Nestor puts the host's question to his guests. He asks it in the old formula: are you men on honest business, or raiders who rove the sea living by plunder?
A note on this passage
Now the host may finally ask. Nestor lays out the standard pair of possibilities: honest men on business, or pirates roaming the sea, gambling their lives to prey on strangers. It is the same double question a Homeric host always puts to an unknown arrival.
Two things sit underneath it. First, the pirate half is no insult: raiding was a recognized way of life, and asking it after the guest has eaten drains the question of any threat — the meal already granted him safety. Second, there is the quiet irony the audience feels and Nestor cannot: the true answer is stranger than either guess, for the elder guest at the table is Athena herself, and the young one is the son of the man Nestor fought beside at Troy.
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