HeroesX | Hour 10 Episode 05: Text B and the Interaction of Noos and Nostos

Gregory Nagy and Keith Stone examine Hour 10, Text B, the passage where Odysseus wakes just as the Morning Star rises and the ship reaches Ithaca, a moment where the meanings of noos, consciousness, and nostos, return, converge perfectly. Nagy weighs how much to read into this as allegory, invoking Bach's sleepers awake and the question of whether Odysseus is being nudged toward immortalization, while noting that nothing in the text says so outright. Keith Stone points to the phrase a man who is like the gods and the recurring tension between a hero and the god who resembles him, and Nagy closes by describing Odysseus as a figure in ongoing tension with the divine order, one who may finally find personal peace, though not yet. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Introducing Text B: where noos and nostos converge 00:38 The Morning Star and the moment Odysseus wakes 01:23 How the words noos and nostos synchronize here 02:12 The dawn and the ship's perfect, automatic timing 02:38 Reading the Odyssey as allegory, and its risks 03:22 Bach's sleepers awake and the idea of immortalization 04:01 Do Nagy and Stone read it strictly as allegory 04:07 Keith Stone on the phrase a man who is like the gods 04:35 A hero's antagonism with a god who resembles him 04:41 A nod toward post death immortalization 04:45 Odysseus in dynamic tension with the divine order 05:12 A hope for serenity, not yet realized 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