HeroesX | Hour 09 Episode 14: Demodokos, the Captive Woman Simile, and Epic Empathy

Gregory Nagy and Leonard Muellner read out of Text G, the third performance of Demodokos in Rhapsody viii. Nagy unpacks hormētheis — Demodokos setting his point of departure — as a technical term for how a performer mentally connects to a story-line and times a perfect takeoff. He then tracks the camera-like movement of the narrative: it zooms in on Odysseus at his greatest moment at Troy, then cuts away before the unspeakable — the killing of Astyanax — replacing the action with a simile comparing Odysseus to a captive woman lamenting as her city burns. Muellner notes that the simile evokes Andromache without naming her, accessing the full emotional depth of the tradition in a single image. The conversation broadens into a discussion of why the simile is the right tool: not merely universalizing, but humanizing — connecting dots across enemy lines, across genders, and across the boundary between performer and group, which is what makes Homeric epic, as Aristotle saw, the original form of tragedy. TIMESTAMPS 02:05 Text G: the third performance of Demodokos, cued by Odysseus 02:22 hormētheis: setting the point of departure, the performer's technical start 03:01 phainein: making visible, the root of "fantasy" — the group sees the same thing 03:34 The Trojan Horse scene: three alternatives; the Trojans choose wrong 04:51 The camera zooms in on Odysseus at his greatest moment at Troy 05:50 The cut: the camera moves away before Odysseus kills Astyanax 06:17 Odysseus, unidentified in the audience, begins weeping uncontrollably 06:48 The captive woman simile: Odysseus compared to a lamenting Trojan woman 08:01 The simile takes over the narrative and subjectivizes the experience of war 08:22 Muellner: the simile connects to Penelope's uncontrollable weeping in Rhapsody i 09:43 Gender-crossing: both Odysseus and Achilles are skilled at lament 10:05 The suitors think epic is adventure; Penelope, Odysseus, and Helen know better 11:05 Filos: why is simile the specific tool for this emotional maneuver? 11:22 Nagy: not universalizing — humanizing; connecting dots across enemy lines 12:03 Muellner: simile accesses the whole traditional system without naming names 13:07 The group must feel the action for the connectivity of epic to work 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