Nestor Questions the Guests

10“The fitting time is come to ask our guests
Who they may be, since now their feast is over.
Say then, O strangers, who you are, and whence
You come along the pathway of the deep.
Have you an errand here, or do you roam
The seas at large, like pirates, braving death,
And visiting with ravage foreign states?”

11And then discreet Telemachus replied
Boldly —for Athena strengthened in that hour
His heart that he might confidently ask
News of his absent father, and so win
A worthy fame among the sons of men: —

12“O Nestor, son of Neleus, pride of Greece!
You bid us tell you whence we came, and I
Will faithfully declare it. We are come
From Ithaca, beneath the Neritus,
And private, and not general, is the cause
Of which I am to speak. I came to ask
Concerning my great father, the large-souled
And nobly-born Odysseus, who it is said
With you, his friend in arms, laid waste the town
Of Ilium. We have heard where all the rest
Who warred against the Trojans were cut off,
And died sad deaths; his fate alone the son
Of Cronus has not chosen to reveal —
Whether he fell on land by hostile hands,
Or while at sea was whelmed beneath the waves
Of Amphitrite. Wherefore to your knees
I come, to ask that you —if so you will —
Relate the manner of his mournful death,
As you did see it with your eyes, or else
As you from other wanderers have heard
Its history; for she who brought him forth
Bore him to be unhappy. Think you not
To soften aught, through tenderness to me,
In your recital, but in faithful words
Tell me the whole, whatever you have seen.
And I conjure you, that if, in his life,
My father, great Odysseus, ever gave
Promise of word or deed for you, and kept
His promise, in the realm of Troy, where you
Achaians bore such hardships, that you now
Remember it and speak without disguise.”