Here at I.09.057–058, Nestor makes a remark to Diomedes about that hero’s relatively young age. You could be, Nestor tells Diomedes, the youngest of my sons. Elsewhere, at O.03.412–415, six of Nestor’s sons are mentioned, including Peisistratos, who figures prominently in the Odyssey, and Thrasymedes, who has a major role in the fighting at Troy in the Iliad. Missing from this list in the Odyssey, because he had been killed in action at Troy, is Antilokhos. There is a passing reference to the death of Antilokhos at O.04.186–188. When Nestor makes his remark at I.09.057–058 about the youngest of his sons, the referent here must be Antilokhos, since that hero’s relatively young age is noted elsewhere as well in the Iliad. For example, in a battle scene where the Achaeans are urging each other to fight hard, Menelaos singles out Antilokhos as he urges him on, telling him there is no Achaean there who is younger. And the relatively young age of Diomedes is likewise noted in the Iliad. In another battle scene, at I.14.109–114, while addressing his fellow warriors, Diomedes boasts that ‘I am the youngest among you’ (νεώτατός εἰμι μεθ’ ὑμῖν), I.14.112. So, it may be that Diomedes is even younger than Antilokhos, but that is not the point. Rather, the point is that Antilokhos and Diomedes are comparably young. Nestor himself highlights the youth of Antilokhos when he addresses him on a later occasion, I.23.306. In view of all these other Homeric references, Nestor’s remark at I.09.057–058 about Diomedes as comparable in age to Antilokhos can be seen as an evocation of an epic moment that is awaiting Nestor in the future. At that future moment, Antilokhos, his own young son, will try to save the old hero when Nestor gets entangled in his chariot and is about to be attacked and killed by the chariot fighter Memnon. Antilokhos will succeed in saving Nestor, but it is the young son and not the old father who will now get killed by Memnon. This epic moment, which is in the future for the Iliad, is evidently narrated in a part of the epic Cycle, the Aithiopis, attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, as we read in the plot-summary of Proclus p. 106 lines 4–6 (ed. Allen 1912). On the epic Cycle, see the inventory of Words and Ideas. There is also a reference to this same epic moment in a song of Pindar, Pythian 6.28–42. These non–Iliadic passages have already been cited in the anchor comment on the relevant Iliadic passage, Ι.08.076–117. In that passage, which is already in the epic past from the standpoint of the current Iliadic passage taken from I.09.057–058, Diomedes was acting as a stand-in for Antilokhos, performing in the epic past a task that mirrors the task that will be undertaken by Antilokhos in the epic future. That task was to save Nestor from his entanglement in his chariot. Diomedes saved the life of Nestor, and Nestor knows it when he now compares young Diomedes to his own young son, I.09.057–058. As for Antilokhos, he too will save the life of Nestor, but, unlike Diomedes, he will lose his own life in performing this same task in the future, which is, to save Nestor from another entanglement. And of course Nestor does not yet know it. So, there is an irony in the remark made by the old hero here in comparing young Diomedes to young Antilokhos, though of course the character of Nestor did not intend such an irony. The intentionality, rather, is to be found in the poetics of evocation.