Book 8
3.28
Furthermore, the detailed account which Nestor recites to Patroclus concerning the war that took place between the Pylians and the Eleians pleads for what I have been trying to prove, if one observes the verses of the poet. For in them the poet says that, since Heracles had ravaged the Pylian country to the extent that all the youth were slainHom. Il. 11.691 and that of all the twelve sons of Neleus only Nestor, then in his earliest youth,Hom. Il. 11.670 had been left,Hom. Il. 11.691 and since the Epeians had conceived a contempt for Neleus because of his old age and lack of defenders, they began to treat the Pylians in an arrogant and wanton manner. So, in return for this treatment, Nestor gathered together all he could of the people of his homeland, made an attack, he says, upon Eleia, and herded together very much booty, “fifty herds of cattle, and as many flocks of sheep, and as many droves of swine,”Hom. Il. 11.678and also as many herds of goats, and one hundred and fifty sorrel mares, most of them with foals beneath them. “And these,” he says, “we drove within Neleian Pylus, to the city, in the night,”Hom. Il. 11.682meaning, first, that it was in the daytime that the driving away of the booty and the rout of those who came to the rescue took place (when he says he killed Itymoneus), and, secondly, that it was in the nighttime that the return took place, so that it was night when they arrived at the city. And while the Pylians were busied with the distribution of the booty and with offering sacrifice, the Epeians, on the third day,Hom. Il. 11.707 after assembling in numbers, both footmen and horsemen, came forth in their turn against the Pylians and encamped around Thryum, which is situated on the Alpheius River. And when the Pylians learned this, they forthwith set out to the rescue; they passed the night in the neighborhood of the Minyeius River near Arene, and thence arrived at the Alpheius “in open sky,” that is, at midday. And after they offered sacrifice to the gods and passed the night near the river, they joined battle at early dawn; and after the rout took place, they did not stop pursuing and slaying the enemy until they set foot on Buprasium “and on the Olenian Rock and where is the place called Hill of Aleisium,Cp. 8. 3. 10. whence Athene turned the people back again;”Hom. Il. 11.757and a little further on the poet says: “But the Achaeans drove back their swift horses from Buprasium to Pylus.”Hom. Il. 11.759
