HeroesX | Hour 08 Episode 03: Hector at the Tomb of Ilos and Trojan Hero Cult

Professor Gregory Nagy and Claudia Filos read out of Iliad Scroll X, where Hector stations himself at the tomb of the founding hero Ilos. Nagy explores how the Trojans serve as a mirror for the Achaeans, allowing the epic to speak more explicitly about hero cult, the energy of the dead hero, and the psūkhē as an object of worship. TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Hector at the tomb of Ilos in Scroll X 01:13 Hero cult among the Trojans as a mirror of Achaean practice 02:01 How other media, including Herodotus and Philostratus, speak more freely about cult 03:28 The religious experience of hero cult: worship as real and tangible 04:11 The psūkhē and the psychology of communicating with the dead 05:05 Heroes as models, positive and negative 05:27 Crisis, focus, and the privilege of reading out of the Iliad 06:04 Heroes as index and indicator: why the tomb matters 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