We are delighted to share a series of Office Hours video discussions originally recorded during HeroesX—the MOOC ‘The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours’ (H24H). This MOOC project was first launched in 2013 with Professor Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and Professor of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, based on his long-running Harvard course at Harvard College and the associated course at Harvard Extension School, and ran through to 2023 with over 150,000 enrolments from over 170 countries. From v3–v16 of HeroesX, Gregory Nagy and his colleagues recorded Office Hours videos to answer some of the participants’ comments and questions, and also to provide additional explanations about the content and themes.
The recordings comprise informal conversations featuring Gregory Nagy, with Claudia Filos, Keith DeStone, and later also include members of the HeroesX Team: Hélène Emeriaud, Janet M. Ozsolak, and Sarah Scott. There are additional videos featuring Leonard Muellner. The discussions explore heroes, myth, Greek epic, rituals of ancient Greece, drama, philosophy, and history, all based on readings of masterpieces of ancient Greek literature, with a special focus on hero and hero cult.
We shall release each series of videos regularly over the summer—subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive notifications.
Kosmos Society YouTube channel
The HeroesX Office Hours page on the Kosmos Society website will list the content of all the Office Hours videos and will be updated in due course.
Further details and resources
From the MOOC description:
In this introduction to ancient Greek culture and literature, learners will experience, in English translation, some of the most beautiful works of ancient Greek literature and song-making spanning over a thousand years from the 8th century BCE through the 3rd century CE: the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey; tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; songs of Sappho and Pindar; dialogues of Plato, and On Heroes by Philostratus. …
Professor Gregory Nagy and his Board of Readers, … model techniques for “reading out” of ancient texts. This approach allows readers with little or even no experience in the subject matter to begin seeing this literature as an exquisite, perfected system of communication.
The associated book, The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours by Gregory Nagy (H24H) is available to read online or download:
https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_NagyG.The_Ancient_Greek_Hero_in_24_Hours.2013
The Sourcebook of texts is available to download in various formats from the Text Library page at Kosmos Society, and the individual texts are also available to read online, along with additional texts that track the same key words.
The Core Vocabulary of key Greek terms (and a list of additional Greek terms from H24H) is on the Kosmos Society website.
HCE, the Harvard Extension School, will be running The Ancient Greek Hero course (CLAS E-116) for credit; the next iteration starts in January 2026:
https://coursebrowser.dce.harvard.edu/course/the-ancient-greek-hero/