But like an archaeologist who discovers a relic of a bygone age to which no story is attached, Nestor cannot know. Which is it? The turning post for forgotten games of long ago, or a memorial of some forgotten man? Given the commemorative purpose of the race itself, the uncertainty is unsettling. Of a man dead long ago, or a turning post “As to the mark, it stands out you can’t miss it:Ī dry stump, a man’s height above the ground, Cling to the turning mark, Nestor directs, as translated by Robert Fitzgerald: As contestants line up for the chariot race, Nestor, the aged leader of the Pylians, gives his son Antilochus some unsought advice. Toward the end of Homer’s “Iliad,” the Greek hero Achilles organizes a series of athletic competitions as part of the funeral rites for his fallen comrade Patroclus.
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