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Book Eleven
For a similar tale see 7.1326°. (7.i23-6onn.), and for peaceable relations
with the Epeioi 23.629-42. It has been plausibly thought (e.g. by Kirk,
Songs 22) that the petty international relations implicit in Nestor's tales
are more likely to recall disturbed post-Mycenaean conditions than the
conflicts of the highly organized states revealed by the Linear B tablets.
They are, however, of the same genre as many other hero-tales, e.g. of
Herakles against Eurutos, and of Idas and Lunkeus against Castor and
Poludeukes. See also 6gon. Willcock, CQ58 (1964) 141-54, has argued that
these stories, or some of them, are autoschediasmata, invented for the occasion.
The mention of Ereuthalion at 4.319, however, anticipating his story at
7.136fF., militates against the inclusion of the Pylian epic in that class,
though the general situation, the bad faith of the Epeioi and the fight with
the Molione, could in principle be modelled on the story of the death of the
twins at the hands of Herakles (see Pind. 01. 10.24—38). The story is here
assumed to be a fragment of genuinely traditional material.
The geography and chronology of the tale is presented with unusual
clarity (for narrative topoi see nn.):
Day 1. Nestor seizes cattle, etc.
Night 1. (ivvuxioi, 683) The booty is driven down to Pulos.
Day 2. The booty is divided.
(Night 2. No action.)
Day 3. (xpiTcp fjiaaTi, 707) The Epeioi attack Thruoessa ( = 0puov
'AA98ioTo iropov, 2.592).
Night 3. (ivvuxos, 716) The news reaches Pulos. The Pylians at once
set out.
Day 4. The Pylians march via the R. Minueios to the Alpheios
where they take their evening meal (SopTrov, 730).
Night 4. The Pylians bivouac under arms (731).
Day 5. The battle. The Epeioi are harried as far as Bouprasion.
There are two difficulties here (1) the location of Pulos, and (2) the
pursuit to Bouprasion. It is twice implied that'Pulos' is a day's (or night's)
march from the Epean territory. It follows that this 'Pulos' cannot be the
Messenian Pulos, which lies more than a hundred miles away at Epano
Englianos, unless the poet's sources were much more incoherent about the
geography of the western Peloponnese than appears to be the case. A Pulos
at modern Kakovatos in Triphylia about twenty miles south of the Alpheios
would fit the tale much better. (The exegetic scholia to 726 speak of an
'Arcadian Pulos' 130 stades from the Alpheios.) Nestor's reminiscences are
of course extraneous to the action of the Iliad and evidently draw on
different source material; they are not the best evidence for the location of
'Pulos' in the main narrative of either Homeric epic. See 2.591-4^, Strabo
297