HeroesX | Hour 05 Episode 08: Sappho Song 1 — Thūmos, Mainolās, and the Frenzied Heart

Claudia Filos reads Sappho Song 1, the prayer to Aphrodite, aloud in full, and Professor Gregory Nagy begins his close reading by zeroing in on a single phrase: mainolās thūmos, translated as "frenzied heart." He explains that thūmos is one of the most layered words in ancient Greek, simultaneously the seat of emotions (what we would call heart) and the seat of thinking (what we would call mind), a division that English largely enforces but ancient Greek does not, with "I learned it by heart" being one of the few surviving traces of the older fusion. The word mainolās, "frenzied," goes further still: it derives from the same root as maenad, a woman possessed by Dionysus, and so the phrase means not merely that the heart is agitated but that it is in the grip of a god. Nagy connects this to a vase painting in Munich that places Dionysus and a maenad face to face on one side, and Sappho and Alcaeus face to face on the other, with both Sappho and the maenad depicted with hair just beginning to come undone, showing how ancient vase painters visualized the same state of divine possession that Sappho's own song describes. TIMESTAMPS 00:04 Claudia Filos reads Sappho Song 1 in full 01:19 Where to begin: focusing on "my frenzied heart" in line 17-18 01:56 Thūmos: the seat of emotions and thinking, heart and mind together 03:26 "I learned it by heart": English's surviving trace of mind-heart fusion 03:39 Mainolās: frenzied, possessed by Dionysus 04:07 A vase painting in Munich: Dionysus and a maenad face to face 04:22 The maenad penetrated by the gaze of Dionysus; hair coming undone 04:39 The other side of the vase: Sappho and Alcaeus face to face 05:06 Nagy's article "Did Sappho and Alcaeus ever meet?" 05:14 Sappho on the vase with hair just starting to come loose 05:33 Vase painters capturing what mainolās thūmos looks like 05:46 Song 1 as an invitation to think about hundreds of other situations 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