Odyssey 4.207 · Book 4, lines 207–210
A blessed line, plain to know
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ῥεῖα δʼ ἀρίγνωτος γόνος ἀνέρος ᾧ τε Κρονίων ὄλβον ἐπικλώσῃ γαμέοντί τε γεινομένῳ τε, ὡς νῦν Νέστορι δῶκε διαμπερὲς ἤματα πάντα αὐτὸν μὲν λιπαρῶς γηρασκέμεν ἐν μεγάροισιν,
And easily known is the offspring of a man for whom the son of Kronos spins out prosperity, both at his marriage and at his birth, as now he has granted to Nestor continually, all his days, that he himself grow old in comfort in his halls,
Word by word
The setting
Menelaus draws the moral of Peisistratus's good breeding into a general truth: the child of a man the gods favor is easy to recognize. Zeus spins out such a man's prosperity at his marriage and his birth — as he has done for Nestor, granting him a sleek old age at home.
A note on this passage
Menelaus turns a compliment into a maxim. The child of a divinely favored man is unmistakable, he says: the gods stamp their blessing on the whole line. Zeus spins out such a man's fortune at the two hinges of a life — the wedding and the birth — so that prosperity is woven in from the start. Nestor is the living proof, granted a long, easeful old age in his own halls.
The fate-word is ἐπικλώθω, ‘spins,’ the Fates' loom-verb: blessedness is thread measured out, not luck. And λιπαρῶς — ‘sleekly,’ literally glistening with oil — makes Nestor's old age a physical image of well-kept prosperity. Against Menelaus's own tale of wandering and loss, and the shadow of Agamemnon's ruined house, Nestor stands as the one hero for whom the homecoming worked out whole.
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