Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

When the Achaeans sailed home from Troy, storms and divine anger already scattered them. Nauplius of Euboea, father of the murdered Palamedes, completed their ruin on the stormy coast of Caphereus (the “Hollows” of Euboea). He lit false beacons on the cliffs so that ships running before the gale took the lights for a safe harbor and drove onto the rocks. Many hulls broke; men drowned in the surf; wreckage and corpses washed the shore. Apollodorus lists the disaster among the nostoi calamities; tragedy and handbook tradition name Nauplius as the beacon-lighter who avenged his son when the army had refused him justice at Troy. The Caphereus wreck becomes the emblematic nostos catastrophe after Athena’s storm: not only gods but a wronged mortal father turns the homeward voyage into shipwreck. Survivors who rounded Euboea safely (Nestor; some other contingents) pass into local return stories; the dead and delayed feed the map of scattered Achaean foundations and wanderings.