That several of the passages in which Nestor speaks are very late interpolations, meant to glorify Pisistratus, himself of Nestor’s line, is a critical opinion to which we have more than once alluded. The first example is in Iliad, II. 530–568. This passage “is meant at once to present Nestor as the leading counsellor of the Greek army, and to introduce the coming Catalogue.” 347 Now the Catalogue “originally formed an introduction to the whole Cycle.” 348 But, to repeat an earlier observation, surely the whole Cycle was much later than the period of Pisistratus and his sons; that is, the compilation of the Homeric and Cyclic poems into one body of verse, named “The Cycle,” is believed to have been much later.

It is objected that Nestor’s advice in this passage, “Separate thy warriors by tribes and clans” ([Greek: phyla, phraetras]), “is out of place in the last year of the war”; but this suggestion for military reorganisation may be admitted as a mere piece of poetical perspective, like Helen’s description of the Achaean chiefs in Book III, or Nestor may wish to return to an obsolete system of clan regiments. The Athenians had “tribes” and “clans,” political institutions, and Nestor’s advice is noted as a touch of late Attic influence; but about the nature and origin of these social divisions we know so little that it is vain to argue about them. The advice of Nestor is an appeal to the clan spirit — a very serviceable military spirit, as the Highlanders have often proved — but we have no information as to whether it existed in Achaean times. Nestor speaks as the aged Lochiel spoke to Claverhouse before Killiecrankie. Did the Athenian army of the sixth century fight in clan regiments? The device seems to belong to an earlier civilisation, whether it survived in sixth century Athens or not. It is, of course, notorious that tribes and clans are most flourishing among the most backward people, though they were welded into the constitution of Athens. The passage, therefore, cannot with any certainty be dismissed as very late, for the words for “tribe” and “clan” could not be novel Athenian inventions, the institutions designated being of prehistoric origin.

Nestor shows his tactics again in IV. 303–309, offers his “inopportune tactical lucubrations, doubtless under Athenian (Pisistratean) influence.” The poet is here denied a sense of humour. That a veteran military Polonius should talk as inopportunely about tactics as Dugald Dalgetty does about the sconce of Drumsnab is an essential part of the humour of the character of Nestor. This is what Nestor’s critics do not see; the inopportune nature of his tactical remarks is the point of them, just as in the case of the laird of Drumthwacket, “that should be.” Scott knew little of Homer, but coincided in the Nestorian humour by mere congruity of genius. The Pisistratidze must have been humourless if they did not see that the poet smiled as he composed Nestor’s speeches, glorifying old deeds of his own and old ways of fighting. He arrays his Pylians with chariots in front, footmen in the rear. In the Iliad the princely heroes dismounted to fight, the chariots following close behind them. 349 In the same way during the Hundred Years’ War the English knights dismounted and defeated the French chivalry till, under Jeanne d’Arc and La Hire, the French learned the lesson, and imitated the English practice. On the other hand, Egyptian wall-paintings show the Egyptian chariotry advancing in neat lines and serried squadrons. According to Nestor these had of old been the Achaean tactics, and he preferred the old way. Nestor’s advice in Book IV. is not to dismount or break the line of chariots; these, he says, were the old tactics: “Even so is the far better way; thus, moreover, did men of old time lay low cities and walls.” There was to be no rushing of individuals from the ranks, no dismounting. Nestor’s were not the tactics of the heroes — they usually dismount and do single valiances; but Nestor, commanding his local contingent, recommends the methods of the old school, [Greek: hoi pretoroi]. What can be more natural and characteristic?

The poet’s meaning seems quite clear. He is not flattering Pisistratus, but, with quiet humour, offers the portrait of a vain, worthy veteran. It is difficult to see how this point can be missed; it never was missed before Nestor’s speeches seemed serviceable to the Pisistratean theory of the composition of the Iliad. In his first edition Mr. Leaf regarded the interpolations as intended “to glorify Nestor” without reference to Pisistratus, whom Mr. Leaf did not then recognise as the master of a sycophantic editor. The passages are really meant to display the old man’s habit of glorifying himself and past times. Pisistratus could not feel flattered by passages intended to exhibit his ancestor as a conceited and inopportune old babbler. I ventured in 1896 to suggest that the interpolator was trying to please Pisistratus, but this was said in a spirit of mockery.

Of all the characters in Homer that of Nestor is most familiar to the unlearned world, merely because Nestor’s is a “character part,” very broadly drawn.

The third interpolation of flattery to Pisistratus in the person of Nestor is found in VII. 125–160. The Achaean chiefs are loath to accept the challenge of Hector to single combat. Only Menelaus rises and arms himself, moved by the strong sense of honour which distinguishes a warrior notoriously deficient in bodily strength. Agamemnon refuses to let him fight; the other peers make no movement, and Nestor rebukes them. It is entirely in nature that he should fall back on his memory of a similar situation in his youth; when the Arcadian champion, Ereuthalion, challenged any prince of the Pylians, and when “no man plucked up heart” to meet him except Nestor himself. Had there never been any Pisistratus, any poet who created the part of a worthy and wordy veteran must have made Nestor speak just as he does speak. Ereuthalion “was the tallest and strongest of men that I have slain!” and Nesto............