HeroesX | Hour 04 Episode 01: Kleos Aphthiton, Sappho, and the Lyric Achilles

Professor Gregory Nagy introduces Hour 4 as a turning point in the project: the move from epic to lyric and back again. He opens with Pindar's description of Achilles dying like a beautiful plant, which leads to a reinterpretation of the key phrase kleos aphthiton. Rather than simply "imperishable glory," Nagy now renders it as "unwilting glory," a translation unlocked by the verb phthinein, to wilt, used of Achilles' death in the lyric tradition. He then turns to Sappho, arguably the greatest woman poet of the European tradition, whose fragments illuminate Achilles from a completely different angle. In a wedding song fragment, Sappho applies the phrase kleos aphthiton to Hector and Andromache, showing that this concept belongs not only to epic but to lyric as well. A testimony from the late writer Himerius reveals that Sappho compared the bridegroom at a wedding to Achilles himself, and Achilles to a tender seedling, an image that echoes Thetis's premature lament for her son in Iliad XVIII. Nagy argues that understanding Sappho is essential for understanding Achilles, because Sappho as a woman represents two dimensions of Greek song culture that epic keeps mostly in the background: lament and love song, which in ancient Greek tradition are far more closely intertwined than we might expect, even interchangeable. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introduction 00:56 Text A 01:38 The Muses lament Achilles on his funeral pyre and transform his song into Homeric epic 02:33 Phthinein: Achilles "wilted" like a plant; why kleos aphthiton now means "unwilting glory" 02:54 Texts B and C 03:53 Sappho: the first quotation, and why her poetry matters for reading Achilles 04:08 Sappho's wedding song fragment: kleos aphthiton applied to Hector and Andromache 05:45 Himerius on Sappho: the bridegroom compared to Achilles, the girl compared to an apple 06:33 Why readers relate more easily to Hector than to Achilles, and how lyric changes that 07:43 Weaving Sappho's traditions together with Homeric epic 08:18 Sappho as representative of lament and love song: the two are interchangeable in Greek song culture 09:26 Text F 10:10 Text G 12:19 Embedded songs in epic are re-enactments, not just quotations: lament as public performance 13:50 Fast-forward to the end of the Odyssey: the funeral of Achilles and the Muses singing lament 15:03 Professional versus next-of-kin lament: more stylized versus more physiological, as in Ch'unhyang 16:07 Text I 16:33 Briseis and her lament for Patroklos in Iliad XIX 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, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, the 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... #AncientGreek #HeroesX #GregoryNagy #Homer #Iliad #Odyssey #GreekMythology #ClassicalLiterature #Humanities #NewAlexandriaFoundation