“So you, my friend — do not wander long far from home, leaving your goods with such insolent men, or they will eat up everything. Go to Menelaus. He came home last of the bronze-clad Achaeans. Go by sea with your own ship if you wish; or if you prefer the land road, I have chariot and horses, and my sons can guide you to bright Lacedaemon. Ask him yourself — he will not speak falsely. He is a man of too much understanding.”
As he spoke the sun set. Athena said: “Old man, you have told this rightly. Come — cut the tongues and mix the wine, so we may pour to Poseidon and the other deathless ones, and think of bed. The light has gone under darkness; it is not right to sit long at the gods’ feast.” They listened. Heralds poured water; young men filled the bowls; they threw the tongues on the fire and poured libations.
When Athena and Telemachus made to go to the hollow ship, Nestor held them: “May Zeus keep me from letting you go to your ship as from a man without cloaks or blankets for his guests. The dear son of Odysseus shall not lie down on a ship’s deck so long as I live and children are left in my halls to entertain whoever comes.”
Athena answered that Telemachus should sleep in the halls; she would go cheer the companions by the black ship — she alone among them could claim to be older — and in the morning visit the Caucones for a debt not small. “Send this man with a chariot and your son, and horses strongest and swiftest in the race.” So speaking she went in the likeness of a sea-eagle. Amazement seized all who saw it.
Nestor took Telemachus’s hand: “My friend, I do not think you will be base or a coward if the gods go with you so young. This is none other than Zeus’s daughter Tritogeneia, who also honored your good father among the Argives. Be gracious, queen — give good fame to me and my children and my honored wife. I will sacrifice an unbroken yearling heifer and gild her horns with gold.” Athena heard him.
He led them to his beautiful house. They sat in rows; the old man mixed sweet wine eleven years old and prayed hard, pouring to Athena. When they had drunk as each wished, the others went to lie down. Nestor laid Telemachus under the echoing portico on a corded bedstead; beside him Peisistratus, still unmarried among his sons. The king himself slept in the inmost room with his lady wife.