Old Man Nestor and The High Priest of the Word

 Old Man Nestor and The High Priest of the Word

Now that we have a strong sense of this High Priest of the Word, we can proceed to addressing the question of the Iliad hero Nestor. Scholar Douglas Frame has in recent years forwarded a thesis that connects Nestor, known as Hippota Nestor, or Horseman Nestor, to the Vedic Asvins, also known as Nasatyas. Hippota Nestor would then linguistically parallel Asvin Nasatya, both meaning loosely “Horseman Saviour.” Frame shows how the name Nestor comes from a shared root with the Sanskrit Nasatya, while Hippota means the same thing as Asvin. The shared root connecting Nestor and Nasatya is nes-, denoting “bringing back to light and life,” as Frame puts it. In his earlier work, Frame's original thesis had been that this simlarity was merely a linguistic remnant showing a shared Indo-European concept which had been associated with the root nes-, rather than necessarily making Nestor and the Asvins equivalents. However, in his more recent work, the book Hippota Nestor, Frame has advanced a framework in which Nestor can be seen as indeed an embodiment of the Indo-European Horse Twin mythos, a full parallel of the Asvins.

Although he demonstrates a complex pattern of similarities between the two gods, he himself admits some issues with the comparison. For example, Nestor is never depicted as a twin, and indeed in the competing traditions he is either said to be one of 13 brothers or one of 3 brothers. One of Nestor's brothers dies, which Frame takes to parallel the death of one of the Greek Dioskouroi, and Nestor is supposedly left to carry forward the Horse Twin mythos himself. We admit, from the foregoing, that the idea that the Horse Twins could have been reduced to one Horse Twin is absolutely possible, as we ourselves have argued for a single Horse Twin in Celtic, Norse, and Iranic cases. Still, being the brother of 12 or 2 other sons has not been seen in any other cases and this fraternity does not argue in favor of Nestor as such a Horse Twin. Nestor “brings back to life and light,” embodying the verb nes-, when he heals the physician Machaon with his famous cup of healing, and when he aids some of the Greeks in their return voyage home. Nestor is one of two main counselors among the Greeks, while the role of counselor is common among the Horse Twins, as with Sahadeva or Aengus. Beyond this, the parallels become quite arcane. We will not be able to do justice in this study to what is a masterful and learned argument on the part of Frame. But other issues arise.

For instance, in every mythos we have investigated so far, the Horse Twins (or Horse Twin) are the exemplars of youth. They are eternally youthful, embodying fertility and vitality and often having some variation of “Young Son” as part of their very name. Nestor on the other hand is the reverse of this: he is by far the oldest Greek, so old that it is incredible he is still alive and standing with the war party. He has been blessed by Apollo to live an extended period of time as recompense for Apollo's murder of his siblings. Everything about Nestor is inflected by this character of great agedness, and he in no way can embody the youth of the Horse Twins, which is so central to their character. Getting around this issue requires Frame to posit that Nestor's mythos had been preserved by one particular family separate from the rest of the epic, and that inserting him into the Iliad narrative after also having been a key figure in narratives that had taken place many decades earlier necessitated the agedness of Nestor. This explanation, however, is asking for a special case for Nestor beyond what we have needed to grant the other heroes of the epic, and it remains only a speculative historical theory that cannot be proven or disproven. What cannot be escaped is the fact that Nestor of the Iliad is the exemplar of old age while the Horse Twins are the eternally young gods. 

Furthermore, while several traits of the Horse Twins do seem to overlap the figure of Nestor, namely: counselor, horseman, healer, most of these traits can again be said to overlap the figure we have just analyzed, the High Priest of the Word. Not only this, but if Nestor is analyzed in relation to this High Priest divinity, more of his character can be explained. Like the Horse Twins, the High Priest of the Word, as we have seen, is repeatedly associated with the power of healing the wounded and reviving the dead – which is, as Frame puts it, “bringing back to light and life” – and seeing Nestor as this High Priest would also explain his name coming from the root nes- as well as seeing him as a Horse Twin would. Indeed the Horse Twins are healers, but it is the High Priest Dian Cecht who has the well that revives the dead that is specifically used during the Great War. Dian Cecht oversees the well of Slainge, which during the Great Battle of Magh Tuireadh brings Tuatha De Danann soldiers back from death or near-death each day. The Horse Twins are not depicted as active healers during any of the other Great Wars, and their healing exploits always come in separate rescue stories. Meanwhile, Nestor has a great cup, with which he actively heals warriors during the Trojan War, as when the wounded Machaon is brought to him. This is not a simple cup either, but is big enough that it requires two feet to stand on and four handles, and when full is so heavy that no one but Nestor could lift it. This cup, though difficult to picture in any precise dimensions, begins to sound more like a kind of bowl or vat, closer to a well than to a goblet. While the Horse Twin does, of course, become the caretaker of the Holy Grail, in the person of Perceval, there is no indication that the Grail is itself primarily a cup of healing, and at the very least is never shown healing wounded warriors during battle. The Soma-Grail gives illumination, immortality, and sustenance, and is kept always in a mysterious castle. If it ever gives general healing or does so outside of this context, this is not in the earliest versions. 

While Nestor is one of two main counselors for the Greeks, the other of the two is Odysseus, who we see paired in a (horse)twinlike fashion with Diomedes, and who more closely parallels the attributes of the Horse Twin incarnation Sahadeva, as we have discussed previously. The High Priest of the Word is the archetypal teacher of the other gods, and as such giving counsel would fit his role perfectly. As the names Cainte (Dian Cecht’s byname meaning “speech”) and Apollo tell us, The High Priest of the Word is the god of authoritative acts of speech generally. He may give the advice of a wise sage while also in many other ways embodying the power and functions of the spoken word. This again fits Nestor perfectly, for Nestor is the hero who is known for his long winded stories of past adventures, boasts, encouragements and all manner of long speeches. In fact, the types of speeches that Nestor gives match the types of “speech-acts” that the High Priest of the Word is specially known for: boast, which particularly characterizes Nestor, and as we have seen is a part of the etymology of Apollo's name (Nagy demonstrating its meaning as “promise, boastful promise, threat”); motivation to fight, as the galdrs and paeans were often said to be sung at the beginning of battles to give strength to the warriors; and finally counsel, which we have covered as an aspect of the High Priest's role as teacher. Seeing Nestor as this High Priest of the Word then makes clear why he is depicted as so fully embodying speech – longwinded digressions, etc. – and why these exact forms of speech. We now can see why Nestor boasts, reminisces, counsels, and why he goads, for instance, Patroclus to battle. The sometimes questionable quality of Nestor's counsels have made him appear a kind of fool to some critics, as his goading sends Patroclus to his death, but if we understand that his incitements come from a specific theological role of goading to battle, the cause for this is explained. 

The Horse Twins, in fact, are not prominently known as gods of speech. One or both of them are good counselors, but this trait does not extend to a general lordship of the power of speech. This fact fits much better with the idea that Odysseus is the counselor Horse Twin: none of Odysseus' epithets relate to his power of speech, but many relate to his craftiness, a key trait of the Horse Twins, and yet another trait that Nestor seems to greatly lack in comparison with Odysseus or even Diomedes, he of the Diomedian Swap. When Odysseus does unleash his well-tuned speaking ability in key moments, it catches observers off guard as something unexpected in relation to his “churl”-ish and ignoble bearing, as the craftier Vedic Horse Twin incarnation, Sahadeva, also is shown, in disguise, as a relatively lowly keeper of cows. Overall, Odysseus and Sahadeva's ability to speak and counsel has a more narrow application than does Nestor's. Nestor, on the other hand, is introduced as a “clear-voiced orator,” of “sweet words,” whose voice at all times “flows sweeter than honey.” While Odysseus is a hero of counsel and craftiness, which the Horse Twins are as well, Nestor is far more the preeminent hero of speech itself, which the Horse Twins are not. 

Frame points out that, in its Greek developent, the root of Nestor, nes-, has another associated meaning as well: “mind,” that is, noos. It is true, as Frame argues, that the Nasatyas are “intelligent,” and that this could be one layer of the meaning of their name. However, we must look in particular at the sense of the word noos as it developed in Greek, and consider who it applies more to, a High Priest god or a god of worldly intelligence, a Horse Twin. Indeed, the word noos came to mean “mind” in the highest philosophical sense, while Frame himself argues that “if return was the basic notion of the root of noos the noun most likely designated “consciousness” in the first place.” We have already shown how the High Priest of the Word is he who returns the light of consciousness by freeing the cattle of illumination from their dark covering. Apollo, for his part, is described by Thomas Taylor as the emanation of the solar monad on the intellectual level, connecting both illumination and mind as closely as can be done, and is above any other god in this. As is the meaning of the root nes-, The High Priest of the Word both returns consciousness to light, and returns to life with his power of reviving. We see just how much these notions overlap in the cases of the Horse Twins and High Priest of the Word, and can imagine how the root nes- could have been used interchangeably for both and remained accurate in its meaning, and how confusion could even have developed in its application. 

Furthermore, Frame discusses how Nestor is a skilled reader of sema, or “signs,” as when he interprets events on the sea journey back home in a manner that allows he and his companions to have a safe return. Who is more a reader of signs than the High Priest of the Word, Apollo, the exemplar oracular god? What of the secret “signs” or symbols that the High Priest Odin receives from the tree, the runes? Indeed, there is nothing in the mythos of the Horse Twins that explains this sema-reading feature of Nestor's skillset, other than a general idea of aiding safe returns, which is a Horse Twin trait but more often has to do with rescues. Of oracles it is a commonplace that they read “signs,” and this also does Nestor. 

Finally, in what appears an archaic genealogy that we have seen backed up in Greek terms by the Greek Pindar (Apollo being the father of Pan, who is companion of Zeus' mother and provides his goat as Zeus' nurse), Irish Dian Cecht is the grandfather of Lugh. This means that by the time Lugh is raised and the Great Battle that he wins with his victorious spear begins, Dian Cecht is at least three “generations old,” if such a concept can be applied to a god in anything but a loose sense. Nestor himself is said to be three generations old during the Great War of Troy. Perhaps this alone accounts for his great age: he is the incarnation of one of the first gods, the gods three generations back from the main gods of the Great War. From this perspective, no speculative historical argument about Nestor's mythos being separately preserved and awkwardly inserted into the epic with him now turned old is required. Furthermore, it is Apollo himself who is closest associated with Nestor's family history and childhood. As aforementioned, Apollo kills the siblings of Nestor to punish his mother, and gives Nestor unnaturally long life to balance the bloody affair. This makes Apollo himself the divine source of Nestor's extended vitality, perhaps as if Nestor is infused with the spirit of the god. Nestor's grandson is sometimes also said to have been Homer. We must ask ourselves, who would be the more likely grandfather of this greatest of all Greek poets, an incarnation of one of the Horse Twins, or an incarnation of Apollo, god of poetry and the Word? 

One detail that this interpretation cannot well account for is the fact that Nestor is named “Horseman.” He is Hippota Nestor. However, we have seen in our investigation how widely the title of Horseman has been applied in the various branches, and for how many different reasons. It is not at all an uncommon title. In fact, Horseman is a common solar title in particular, with the Irish sun god Bres being called “Horseman Bres” to reinforce his solar quality. Apollo likely had a solar role from the beginning, if the esoteric interpretation is correct, and eventually became conflated with the sun itself. It is not impossible that Nestor's title could reinforce the solar aspect of his character then, or could simply derive from his own mythos as a skilled charioteer. Ultimately, the concept of a Horseman who is also a reviver, a savior, could again have been an overlapping theological idea shared between the High Priest and Horse Twin deities in early times. We admit, however, that the simple linguistic comparison is striking. The present analysis, however, has been an attempt to eschew the linguistic level, which is often misleading, and instead confront the actual attributes of Nestor's character to see who is being presented to us under this name. It appears to us that one possibility is that Nestor could be a manifestation of the Horse Twin mythos; but that, upon analysis, the actual Old Man Nestor who is manifested in the Iliad has slightly more in common with our High Priest of the Word.

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