Pylos
place · 8 works · 25 mentions · 43 anchored passages
sandy Pylos · city of Neleus · distant Pylos · goodly Pylos · the city of Neleus
in the texts
Odyssey
The kingdom of Nestor, the first destination proposed by Athena for Telemachus's journey to learn of his father.
I will also conduct him to Sparta and to Pylos, to see if he can hear anything about the return [ nostos] of his dear father - for this will give him genuine fame [ kleos] throughout humankind.
First go to Pylos and ask Nestor;
Give me, then, a ship and a crew of twenty men to take me hither and thither, and I will go to Sparta and to Pylos to inquire about the nostos of my father who has so long been missing.
Iliad
Nestor's kingdom, ruled by him across three generations.
Two generations of men born and bred in Pylos had passed away under his rule, and he was now reigning over the third.
I came from distant Pylos, and went about among them, for they would have me come, and I fought as it was in me to do.
But first he summoned a meeting of the elders at the ship of Nestor king of Pylos, and when they were assembled he laid a cunning counsel before them.
Clouds
A site in Messenia where Spartan soldiers were famously captured, referenced in Strepsiades' simile.
To the Spartans who were taken at Pylos.
Against Boeotus II
Place where Cleon captured many Lacedaemonians.
Besides all this, my mother is shown to have been first given in marriage to Cleomedon, whose father Cleon, we are told, commanded troops among whom were your ancestors, and captured alive a large number of Lacedaemonians in Pylos, and won greater renown than any other man in the state;
Orations
Site where the Athenians captured Laconian shields, later displayed as a prized trophy.
For they possess as a far more august and excellent offering the scimitar of Mardonius and the shields of the Laconians once captured at Pylos, than the propylaea of the Acropolis and the Olympieum, built at a cost of more than ten thousand talents.
Iphigenia in Aulis
Nestor's home city on the western Peloponnese, source of his contingent in the catalogue of ships.
Also I saw upon Gerenian Nestor’s prows from Pylos the ensign of his neighbour Alpheus, four-footed like a bull.
Shield of Heracles
City recalled by Heracles as the site of an earlier clash in which he wounded Ares.
Another time ere this I declare he has made trial of my spear, when he defended sandy Pylos and stood against me, fiercely longing for fight.
Hymn 4 to Hermes
Pylos is the sandy region toward which Hermes drives the stolen cattle and where Apollo seeks them.
So the lord Apollo, son of Zeus, hurried on to goodly Pylos seeking his shambling oxen, and he had his broad shoulders covered with a dark cloud.
Then the two all-glorious children of Zeus hastened both to sandy Pylos, and reached the ford of Alpheus, and came to the fields and the high-roofed byre where the beasts were cherished at night-time.
He stole away my cows from their meadow and drove them off in the evening along the shore of the loud-roaring sea, making straight for Pylos.