maceman

Updated: May 23, 2025

If Nestor's speech is a late interpolation, if its late author borrowed his vivid account of the Maceman and his casse- tete from the mere word "maceman" in VII. 9, he must be credited with a lively poetic imagination. Few or none of these reminiscences of Nestor are really "inapplicable to the context." Here the context demands encouragement for heroes who shun a challenge.

Andrew Lang - Homer and His Age

In Greece, it was not unusual for the grandson to bear the grandfather's name, and, if the Maceman was grand-father of Hector's victim, there is no chronological difficulty. The chronological difficulty, in any case, if Hector's victim is the son of the Maceman, is not at all beyond a poetic narrator's possibility of error in genealogy.

Andrew Lang - Homer and His Age