The Ancient Greek Hero

The readings, all in English translation, are the Homeric Iliad and Odyssey, seven tragedies (Aeschylus' Oresteia trilogy, Sophocles' two Oedipus dramas, and Euripides' Hippolytus and The Bacchic Women), and two dialogues of Plato (the Apology and the Phaedo, both centering on the last days of Socrates); and from the dialogue On Heroes by an eminent thinker in the second sophistic movement, Philostratus. The recorded lectures are from the HarvardX course The Ancient Greek Hero. The contents are divided into 24 Hours, a term referring to the number of hour-long class meetings in the academic semester. All the texts are freely available on the multimedia interactive HeroesX website. This site also includes the Sourcebook (masterpieces of Greek literature with tools to track over 70 key concepts in ancient Greek civilization); The Ancient Greek Hero, a six-hundred page book which covers everything in the course; a full set of complex self-assessments; videos of textual close reading for each Hour; hundreds of video dialogues on the weekly focus texts and transcripts for all these videos plus audio files for every video; video clips from movies which we quote; images from vase painting; multimedia annotation tools to engage deeply with every focus text and image; and 24-hour access to discussion forums moderated by the Board of Readers and HeroesX participants from all over the world. When the course ends, students are invited to participate in Hour 25, a free, open-ended companion project hosted by Harvard's Center for Hellenic Studies, with live video dialogues.