The Achaeans, faced with Hector’s challenge, hesitate, I.07.092–093. Their hesitation seems to indicate that not one of them is really the ‘best of the Achaeans’. Finally, Menelaos is first to volunteer for a one-on-one duel with Hector, I.07.094–103. An absence of volunteers, Menelaos knows, would be aklees ‘a thing without glory [kleos]’, I.07.100. It seems of course fitting for him to be the first, since his grievance against the Trojans over the abduction of Helen is primary, but the problem is that all the Achaean chieftains are aware of his inferiority to Hector, I.07.106, and so, fearing for his life, they restrain him from arming himself for a duel. Even the Master Narrator says outright that Hector was superior to Menelaos, I.07.104–105. Then Nestor goads the chieftains to take up the challenge of Hector, I.07.123–161, and his goading now prompts nine of these chieftains to volunteer, I.07.161–169: they are Agamemnon, Diomedes, the two Ajaxes, Idomeneus and Meriones, Eurypylos, Thoas, and Odysseus. It is significant that Nestor’s words refer to these nine chieftains as aristēes Panakhaiōn, I.07.159. For a translation of this expression, the singular form aristeus of plural aristēes first needs to be correlated with the verb aristeuein, which can be translated as ‘strive to be the best, to be aristos’, as at Ι.06.208 and I.11.784. In the second of these two passages, I find it most significant that the referent is Achilles himself. An aristeus, then, is a man who strives to be the best, aristos. Correspondingly, the expression aristēes Panakhaiōn at I.07.159 must refer to ‘men who strive to be the best of all the Achaeans’.