This book is about the Homeric figure Nestor. This study is important because it reveals a level of deliberate irony in the Homeric poems that has hitherto not been suspected, and because Nestor’s role in the poems, which is built on this irony, is a key to the circumstances of the poems’ composition.

Nestor’s stories about the past, especially his own youth, often lack purpose on the surface of the poems, but with a slight shift of focus they provide a deep commentary on the present action of both poems. Nestor’s Homeric epithet, hippota, “the horseman,” permits the necessary refocus. The combination of epithet and name, hippota Nestor, has Indo-European roots, as a comparison with Vedic Sanskrit shows. Interpreted in the context of the Indo-European twin myth, Nestor’s role clearly points beyond itself to the key question in Homeric studies: the circumstances of the poems’ composition.

Nestor has a special relation to Ionia, where the Homeric poems were composed, and through Ionia to early Athens. The relationship between the Ionian city of Miletus and early Athens is particularly important. In addition to the role of these cities, the location of Nestor’s city Pylos, an ancient conundrum, is sharply illuminated by this new interpretation of Nestor’s Homeric role.

In Hippota Nestor and Beyond: Selected Essays, Douglas Frame revisits the Homeric figure of Nestor, who he argues derives from twin figures in Indo-European myth, and dates the composition and performance of the Iliad and Odyssey to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE at a festival of twelve Ionian cities in Asia Minor. Frame takes up subjects such as the evidence for Nestor’s Indo-European origins; the related origins of the Greek word noos, “mind”; the Phaeacians in the Odyssey as the key to the circumstances in which the Homeric poems were created; Nestor’s role connecting the two poems into a one whole. Other essays in the collect break new ground with respect to the circumstances of the poems’ performance; the purpose of the poems in their historical setting; the relation of the poems to other poetic monuments of the time; the reception of the poems in the Greek mainland after their origin in Ionia; and a closer tracking of the Indo-European origins of the figure hippota Nestor, “the horseman Nestor,” in light of the invention of the chariot in the Russian steppes c. 2000 BCE.

In Hippota Nestor and Beyond: Selected Essays, Douglas Frame revisits the Homeric figure of Nestor, who he argues derives from twin figures in Indo-European myth, and dates the composition and performance of the Iliad and Odyssey to the late eighth or early seventh century BCE at a festival of twelve Ionian cities in Asia Minor. Frame takes up subjects such as the evidence for Nestor’s Indo-European origins; the related origins of the Greek word noos, “mind”; the Phaeacians in the Odyssey as the key to the circumstances in which the Homeric poems were created; Nestor’s role connecting the two poems into a one whole. Other essays in the collect break new ground with respect to the circumstances of the poems’ performance; the purpose of the poems in their historical setting; the relation of the poems to other poetic monuments of the time; the reception of the poems in the Greek mainland after their origin in Ionia; and a closer tracking of the Indo-European origins of the figure hippota Nestor, “the horseman Nestor,” in light of the invention of the chariot in the Russian steppes c. 2000 BCE.