Odyssey 4.190 · Book 4, lines 190–192
Nestor called you the wisest
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Peisistratus — Ἀτρεΐδη, περὶ μέν σε βροτῶν πεπνυμένον εἶναι Νέστωρ φάσχʼ ὁ γέρων, ὅτʼ ἐπιμνησαίμεθα σεῖο οἷσιν ἐνὶ μεγάροισι, καὶ ἀλλήλους ἐρέοιμεν.
Son of Atreus, Nestor the old man used to say that you were prudent beyond mortals, whenever we made mention of you in his halls, and questioned one another.
Word by word
The setting
Peisistratus begins to speak, addressing Menelaus as ‘son of Atreus.’ He opens by invoking his own father: Nestor, back home in Pylos, always praised Menelaus as the most prudent of men whenever the two of them talked of him.
A note on this passage
Peisistratus opens with tact. Before offering any counsel of his own, he grounds it in his father's authority: Nestor, the old man of Pylos, always ranked Menelaus first among mortals for good sense. The setting he pictures is domestic and warm — father and son at home, trading talk about the absent hero — which quietly flatters Menelaus while establishing the speaker's own good breeding.
The load-bearing word is πεπνυμένος, ‘prudent,’ the epic's chief praise for judgment and self-command. By putting it in Nestor's mouth, Peisistratus does two things at once: he honors his host and he signals that what follows — a plea to hold grief within limits — is the kind of prudence Menelaus is famous for. The compliment is also a frame for the advice.
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