HeroesX | Hour 08 Episode 10: Klea Andrōn, Phoenix, and the Memory of the Muses

Professor Gregory Nagy and Claudia Filos return to a passage they know well, the klea andrōn in its fullest form, where the glories of men are specified as the glories of men of an earlier time, prosthen, who were heroes. Nagy reads out of the expanded formulation to show that the agenda of klea andrōn is always about ancestors, the notional forebears of heroic age whose deeds epic preserves. Patroklos remains the subtext: his very name encodes the glories of earlier men. The discussion then turns to Phoenix, the old man who tells his story with ostentatious authority, claiming it happened a long time ago. Nagy asks how Phoenix could possibly know such a story so perfectly, and answers through the structure of the Iliad itself: because the story is embedded in the master narrative, it draws on the perfect memory of the Muses. Whatever Phoenix intended Achilles to take from the telling may differ from what a reader who has absorbed the whole Iliad takes away, but his total recall is as legitimate as the total recall of the master Narrator. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Returning to a known passage: klea andrōn in its fullest form 00:34 Prosthen: the glories of men of an earlier time, who were heroes 01:03 The agenda of klea andrōn is always about ancestors 01:27 Patroklos as subtext: his name encodes the glories of earlier men 01:46 Phoenix and the idea of near and dear as connection 01:56 Phoenix's ostentatious authority: it happened a long time ago 02:07 How can Phoenix know such a story perfectly? 02:15 The story's authority comes from being embedded in the master narrative 02:32 The perfect memory of the Muses channeled through the Iliad 02:48 Phoenix's intended takeaway versus what the full Iliad reader receives 03:16 The total recall of Phoenix as legitimate as the master Narrator's ABOUT THIS SERIES HeroesX, also known as The Ancient Greek Hero, is an open-access learning project created by Professor Gregory Nagy and first launched in 2013. It grew out of Harvard's longest-running course, "The Ancient Greek Hero," which Nagy has taught for over fifty years. Since the project's launch, more than 172,000 participants from over 170 countries have joined. It invites everyone, with or without prior experience, to read closely from some of the most beautiful works of ancient Greek literature in English translation: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, songs of Sappho and Pindar, dialogues of Plato, and selections from On Heroes by Philostratus. Throughout the project, Nagy and his team model techniques for reading out of these works inductively, so that learners can begin to see this literature as an exquisite system of communication. It is not a graded course. It is content, community, and conversation that many participants describe as transformative. ABOUT THE NEW ALEXANDRIA FOUNDATION For more than a decade, HeroesX has welcomed learners from around the world, and it now finds a new home at the New Alexandria Foundation, which expands access to the comparative study of civilizations, ancient and modern. Through technology and community, we foster living humanistic dialogues, open to all and enduring across generations. The full HeroesX video library lives on this YouTube channel, and NAF shares the surrounding content, including primary readings, exercises, and resources, to support your reading. 🌐 https://newalexandriafoundation.org/ RESOURCES 🏛️ HeroesX home on Classical Continuum: https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/her... 📘 Read Gregory Nagy's book, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours, free online with illustrations: https://chs.harvard.edu/book/nagy-gre... 📚 Read or download the Sourcebook online (English translations of all the texts discussed in the book and in HeroesX): https://continuum.fas.harvard.edu/the... ✉️ Be the first to hear about HeroesX developments and join an upcoming cohort: https://mailchi.mp/9a41aac39c45/6cnmu... ❤️ Love this work? Help keep HeroesX free and growing with a gift to the New Alexandria Foundation: https://newalexandriafoundation.org/d... #AncientGreek #HeroesX #GregoryNagy #Homer #Iliad #Odyssey #GreekMythology #ClassicalLiterature #Humanities #NewAlexandriaFoundation