Telemachus comes ashore at Pylos and walks straight into a hecatomb. Eighty-eight black bulls, ranks of them, the salt sand dark with what runs out of them, smoke going up to Poseidon — the same god holding his father at the bottom of the world. The boy doesn’t know that yet. He sees an old king doing things right, doing them on the scale a king should, and feels the smallness of his own dying house. The sacrifice is Pylos saying: this is what xenia and reverence look like when nothing has gone wrong. It is a yardstick Telemachus takes home with him.
The Eighty-Eight Black Bulls
Nestor's sacrifice to Poseidon when Telemachus arrives at Pylos. Eighty-eight black bulls, one beach, the smoke rising for the god who hates Odysseus.