Nestor

(European mythology)

The elder statesman of the Greeks during the Trojan War. He was ‘the master of the courteous word, the clear-voiced orator’, who tried to reconcile the enraged Achilles to Agamemnon, the commander-in-chief of the Greek host, when they fell out on the plain of Troy.

Said to have lived to a very great age, Nestor was the son of Neleus, who assumed power in Messenia and built a palace at Pylos. For Homer the generosity of Pylos was renowned, guests ‘ever finding their golden cups brimming with wine’: modern archaeology has perhaps found some evidence of this legendary wealth, in the form of innumerable drinking vessels and the extensive lists of provisions used at sacrificial feasts. When at Athena's instigation Odysseus' son Telemachus arrived by boat, Homer tells how he encountered King Nestor on shore with his followers sacrificing eighty-one ‘jet black bulls to Poseidon, the earth-shaker, god of the sable locks’. The Linear B tablets recovered from the palace archive actually confirm the initial pre-eminence of Poseidon at Pylos, since the offerings to him exceed those awarded to Zeus.

Dictionary: Nes·tor  (nĕs'tər, -tôr')

1. A hero celebrated as an elderly and wise counselor to the Greeks at Troy.
2. often nestor A venerable and wise old man.

[Greek Nestōr.]

For more information on Nestor, visit Britannica.com.

Bibliography

See Russian Primary Chronicle (tr. by S. H. Cross, 1953, repr. 1968).

Nestor may refer to:

• Nestor (mythology), the son of Neleus, the King of Pylos and Chloris in Greek mythology
• Nestor (genus), a genus of parrots in ornithology
• Nestor Project, an international scientific collaboration for the deployment of a neutrino telescope
• Nestor, The Long-Eared Christmas Donkey, a Christmas television program
• Nestoras, Messenia, Greece
• Nestorianism, a doctrine that Jesus exists as two persons, one divine and the other human

A fictional character:

• Nestor (Tintin character), from The Adventures of Tintin series of comic books by Hergé
• Nestor Burma, created by French crime novelist Léo Malet
• Nestor, a character in the animated television series Shorty McShorts' Shorts
• Néstor, a fictional penguin from the film Happy Feet
• A nickname of NS-series robots in the film I, Robot

Nestor may also be:

• A chapter in the novel Ulysses by James Joyce
• A West Cornwall Railway steam locomotive

People with the name Nestor:

• Nestor the Chronicler (c.1056-c.1114), reputed author of the earliest East Slavic chronicle
• Nestorius (c.386–c.451), Patriarch of Constantinople, 428-431
• Saint Nestor, Catholic saint
• Nestor Carbonell (born 1967), American actor
• Nestor García (born 1975), Uruguayan marathon runner
• Néstor Kirchner (born 1950), President of Argentina
• Nestor Makhno (1888-1936), 20th-century Ukrainian anarcho-communist

See also:

• Nester, a character associated with Nintendo

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