Odyssey 4.187 · Book 4, lines 187–189
Nestor's son remembers Antilochus
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μνήσατο γὰρ κατὰ θυμὸν ἀμύμονος Ἀντιλόχοιο, τόν ῥʼ Ἠοῦς ἔκτεινε φαεινῆς ἀγλαὸς υἱός· τοῦ ὅ γʼ ἐπιμνησθεὶς ἔπεα πτερόεντʼ ἀγόρευεν·
for he remembered in his heart blameless Antilochus, whom the glorious son of shining Dawn slew; recalling him, he spoke winged words:
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The setting
Peisistratus, Nestor's son, has just been named the last to weep. Now the poem gives his private reason: his brother Antilochus, killed at Troy by Memnon, the shining son of the Dawn-goddess Eos. Moved by that memory, he speaks.
A note on this passage
The poem supplies the motive behind Peisistratus's tears. Deep in his heart he thinks of his brother Antilochus, killed at Troy — and the killer is named by pedigree rather than by name: the glorious son of shining Dawn, that is, Memnon. Naming Eos, the Dawn, on the far side of the line lets the light-words shining and glorious fall on the very warrior who dealt the death.
Underneath sits the poem's economy of memory. Grief here is not spontaneous but triggered by an act of recollection, and the familiar formula ‘he spoke winged words’ marks the shift from private feeling to public speech. A boy who has just been weeping for a father he never knew now turns his own dead brother into counsel for the grieving hall.
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