HeroesX | Hour 05 Episode 10: Dēute and Poikilothronos: Repetition, Weaving, and the Pattern of Love

Professor Gregory Nagy reads Sappho Song 1 aloud and then focuses on two features that Claudia Filos draws out: the repeated word dēute, "once again this time," and the opening epithet poikilothronos, "you with pattern-woven flowers." Nagy explains that dēute appears across ancient Greek love poetry as a charged signal of erotic recurrence, the feeling of "here I go again" that can range from PG to explicitly sexual depending on the context, and that its triple repetition in Sappho Song 1 is no accident. He then reads the epithet poikilothronos against the ancient practice of weaving on a standing warp-weighted loom, where a weaver works horizontal weft threads across vertical warp threads to create a repeating pattern of flowers, each one the same and yet each one new because it captures a distinct moment of the weaver's interior life. The flowers woven into Aphrodite's robe become, in this reading, a visual image of love experienced over and over: the same love each time, renewed each time, each instance a snapshot of personal feeling. Dēute and the woven flower are two expressions of the same truth at the heart of the song. TIMESTAMPS 00:04 Gregory Nagy reads Sappho Song 1 aloud 01:45 Claudia Filos asks about the repetition of dēute, "once again this time" 02:01 Dēute in love poetry: the feeling of "here I go again" 02:20 The erotic charge of dēute across a range from PG to explicit 03:00 Dēute repeated three times; relevant to how Aphrodite is invoked 03:39 Poikilothronos: "you with pattern-woven flowers" as an archaeologist's translation 03:58 The warp-weighted loom: vertical warp threads, horizontal weft patterns 04:38 Flower, flower, flower: the repeating pattern woven into Aphrodite's robe 05:07 Each flower the same and yet each flower new 05:22 Each instance a snapshot of the weaver's interior life 06:06 Female weavers remembering exactly when they wove each pattern 06:31 The same old love, but each time new, each time renewed 06:41 Dēute and the woven flower as two expressions of the same truth 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