Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours 2nd Abridged edition

In this book based on the Harvard University course he has taught and refined since the late 1970s, Gregory Nagy argues that the ancient Greeks' concept of "the hero" was very different from what we understand by the term today--and it is only through analyzing their historical contexts that we can truly understand Achilles, Odysseus, Oedipus, and Herakles. In Greek tradition, a hero was a human, male or female, of the remote past, who was endowed with superhuman abilities by virtue of being descended from an immortal god. Despite their mortality, heroes, like the gods, were objects of cult worship. Nagy examines this distinctively religious notion of the hero in its many dimensions, in texts spanning the eighth to fourth centuries BCE: the Homeric Iliadand Odyssey; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Eruipides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; and the dialogues of Plato. All works are presented in English translation, with attention to the subtleties of the original Greek. This is a revised paperback edition of the hardcover published in 2013.--

The ancient Greeks’ concept of “the hero” was very different from what we understand by the term today. In 24 installments, based on the Harvard course Nagy has taught and refined since the 1970s, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores civilization’s roots in Classical literature—a lineage that continues to challenge and inspire us.

What does it mean to be a hero? The ancient Greeks who gave us Achilles and Odysseus had a very different understanding of the term than we do today. Based on the legendary Harvard course that Gregory Nagy has taught for well over thirty years, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours explores the roots of Western civilization and offers a masterclass in classical Greek literature. We meet the epic heroes of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, but Nagy also considers the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the songs of Sappho and Pindar, and the dialogues of Plato. Herodotus once said that to read Homer was to be a civilized person. To discover Nagy’s Homer is to be twice civilized.“Fascinating, often ingenious… A valuable synthesis of research finessed over thirty years.”—Times Literary Supplement“Nagy exuberantly reminds his readers that heroes—mortal strivers against fate, against monsters, and…against death itself—form the heart of Greek literature… (He brings] in every variation on the Greek hero, from the wily Theseus to the brawny Hercules to the ‘monolithic’ Achilles to the valiantly conflicted Oedipus.”—Steve Donoghue, Open Letters Monthly