This review was written by avid MOOC student and writer Karen Carlson. It first appeared here on Karen’s blog.
Course Information
Course: The Ancient Greek Hero
Length: 15 weeks, 5-8 hrs/wk
School/platform: Harvard/edX
Instructor: Gregory Nagy & his Board of Readers
Explore what it means to be human today by studying what it meant to be a hero in ancient Greek times.
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….
No previous knowledge of Greek history, literature, or language is required. This is a project for students of any age, culture, and geographic location, and its profoundly humanistic message can be easily received without previous acquaintance with Western Classical literature.
Short Summary
An outstanding class, focusing on thematic elements of Greek literature, particularly by use of detailed examination of language. It’s a massive class in length, depth, and complexity, but it’s one of those “if you get half of it, you’ve accomplished a lot” things.
Course Design
The course was set up as a series of “hours”; in most weeks, two of these hours were covered. The presentations varied: often, Prof. Nagy would discuss some element with a student, postdoc, or fellow professor, each of whom might have different specialities. In the early weeks, outside materials were covered frequently: films (several Blade Runner clips in particular– “Like tears in rain. Time to die” – were discussed in detail), ballet, songs and rituals from a variety of cultures – Maori, Slavic, Korean, Ethiopian – and more contemporary literature, showing how elements of Greek song culture persists today.
Each hour focused on eight to fifteen core passages, often from several works, using one or two Greek words as a basis for the thematic topic: kleos, akhos/penthos, therapon, sema, psūkhē, dikē, and so on. These words and the intricacies of their meanings in different contexts and eras formed a backbone around which the discussion grew. From there things mushroomed into a huge treasure chest of philosophy, history, artistic interpretation, linguistics, and literary theory. It’s quite an experience, but one I find hard to describe from outside the course.
Achilles
For example, in the early weeks we covered Achilles’ decision-making process on whether to return to Greece or continue fighting. His mother told him if he left, he would live a long, safe, unheralded life, but if he stayed, he would die but would receive glory (kleos) forever – which has special resonance since we’re reading these words written a few thousand years ago, recited hundreds of years before that. Then, in one of the last hours, we see Plato rewrite Achilles so his decision is not based on a desire for fame but on justice. Is this legal? What does it mean, to edit the story this way?
A Wealth of Material
The materials insist the class is suitable, even intended, for those without any prior exposure to ancient Greek literature. It’s absurd for me to second-guess these guys – the course has been part of the Harvard curriculum for decades (one of my MOOC buddies took it when she was an undergrad there), it was one of the earliest MOOCs on edX, and hell, even Oprah took it, or at least took parts of it, since she mentioned it in the 2013 commencement speech she delivered at Harvard – but I wouldn’t have wanted it to have been my first classics course. The focus is not on plot or traditional interpretation – you’re expected to read the works and get that on your own – but on how heroic elements are conveyed and how these run through different genres and ages of literature.
While there’s a wealth of material on all of the covered works (I found The Rugged Pyrrhus to be useful for brief traditional summaries, while Overly Sarcastic Productions is the Mad Magazine of hilarious classics/history interpretation) I’m not sure I could’ve done all the work required if I hadn’t already taken coursework on these plays and poems. Actually, I am sure: I’d never read the entire Iliad as a single work before (and still haven’t read the Catalog of Ships or the details of most of the battles, though a lot of that was covered in the class) and it was an intense four weeks; sustaining that for 14 weeks would’ve been absurd. But, everyone’s different.
Grading/Assessment
Graded material was minimal: a few multiple choice questions and a set of text-interpretation questions at the end of each hour. The questions were surprisingly difficult, with subtle shades of meaning or levels of detail frequently distinguishing one answer from another. Or maybe I’m just stupid; although I “passed”, I did fairly poorly on the graded material, and often felt perplexed as to why. But since my purpose has nothing to do with grades, I did the best I could to understand what was being asked, versus what I thought was required.
Also part of the grading was the discussion forum. I really hate forced discussions, so I skipped this entirely. For this class, discussion was held on an outside site which required separate login permission. At the time I started, I was kind of annoyed by this, as well as by the requirement to post; I’ve signed up for these in other courses, and it annoys me to have so many logins and hand out my email to so many systems I’m only going to use once (and makes me a little nervous in this time of electronic insecurity). So I didn’t request a login/password. I came to regret that about halfway through since I found I had questions and observations I would have liked to have shared. Every week a status email would introduce the new material and give a link for obtaining the necessary permissions, so I could have changed my mind at any point, but I didn’t.
Cerego
I used Cerego as a study aid, creating a “memory set” for the course, and I’m quite glad I did. It was useful during the course itself, to keep track of words and concepts and characters (who was Eëtion again, what does lugros mean?) since there was so much to remember, but it’s also nice to have it as a reminder afterwards, to retain more than I otherwise would have. And it’s fun to be reminded of things down the road, when the timed recall goes to weeks and then months.
A free textbook is part of the course; this can be downloaded as a PDF or purchased as an e-book, or just read online. It includes significant introductory details on the video material; I found that I had a much better grasp of things when I spent the time to go through the text before the videos, than when I skipped it for lack of time. Many of the quiz questions I found puzzling were, in fact, in this introductory material, though it took an embarrassingly long time to realize that: details of motivations and deeper levels of interpretation. It’s fascinating reading.
A Quote From the Course
Our project is about heroes— not the way we may understand them when we first hear the word, but the way the ancient Greeks understood them in the context of ancient Greek civilization. I’m arguing that if you understand what the ancient Greek hero is, you simultaneously will understand far better what ancient Greek civilization is….
And I guarantee you, if you get through especially the Iliad and the Odyssey and the seven tragedies and the two dialogues of Plato, you will really feel the way Herodotus says you should feel: that you’ve had a civilizing experience.
…we’re trying to do it all at once in translation, with key words embedded in the translation so that you don’t get tempted to read into the text. You keep reading out of the text, because these key words are some of the basic words of Greek civilization. I can go away saying that you, if you participated in this, you are civilized by the standards of ancient Greek civilization. We are essentially making an attempt to engage with all of Greek civilization, even if we start with specific things that we hope will inspire people to go even further.
~ Prof. Gregory Nagy
I think of this course as “Modpo (Modern & Contemporary American Poetry) for classics” – a kind of “spend as much time as you have” thing, where you can probably zip through it and get the basics (the key points are repeated many times), or you can spend all your free time exploring depths and asides. And, it’s apparently a course a lot of people take more than once, just to get more out of it.
A Final Thought
I knew about this a couple of years ago, but I didn’t want to bother with the Iliad; to me, it was all about battles and war. I’m very glad that I now understand it’s about far more than that.
By Karen Carlson, published March 13, 2018.
