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Updated: June 19, 2025
It is entirely in nature that he should fall back on his memory of a similar situation in his youth; when the Arcadian champion, Ereuthalion, challenged any prince of the Pylians, and when "no man plucked up heart" to meet him except Nestor himself. Had there never been any Pisistratus, any poet who created the part of a worthy and wordy veteran must have made Nestor speak just as he does speak.
Lycurgus then spoiled him of the armour which Mars had given him, and bore it in battle thenceforward; but when he grew old and stayed at home, he gave it to his faithful squire Ereuthalion, who in this same armour challenged the foremost men among us.
And Nestor, knight of Gerene, answered, "Son of Atreus, I too would gladly be the man I was when I slew mighty Ereuthalion; but the gods will not give us everything at one and the same time. I was then young, and now I am old; still I can go with my knights and give them that counsel which old men have a right to give.
Ereuthalion "was the tallest and strongest of men that I have slain!" and Nestor, being what he is, offers copious and interesting details about the armour of Ereuthalion and about its former owners. The passage is like those in which the Icelandic sagamen dwelt lovingly on the history of a good sword, or the Maoris on the old possessors of an ancient jade patu.
Would to Zeus, and to Athene and Apollo, that I were young, as when the Pylians met the Arcadians in battle, and Ereuthalion, the squire of King Lycurgus of Arcadia, wearing the divine armor of Areïthous, of the iron mace, before the walls of Pheia, by the waters of Iardanus, challenged all our host; and they were afraid and trembled.
The godlike hero Ereuthalion stood forward as their champion, with the armour of King Areithous upon his shoulders Areithous whom men and women had surnamed 'the Mace-man, because he fought neither with bow nor spear, but broke the battalions of the foe with his iron mace.
But the common lot of age is heavy upon thee; would that it had come upon some other man, and thou wert amid the young." Then knightly Nestor of Gerenia answered him: "Atreides, I verily, even I too, would wish to be as on the day when I slew noble Ereuthalion. But the gods in no wise grant men all things at once. As I was then a youth, so doth old age now beset me.
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