During my final semester as an undergraduate student at Harvard, I enrolled in one of the College’s most renowned courses: GENED 1074: The Ancient Greek Hero, taught by Dr. Gregory Nagy, one of the world’s foremost scholars in Homeric poetry.

The course itself has been taught for decades, with several students in my class mentioning that their parents had taken the very same course many years ago – an intergenerational testament to its profound influence.

The class addresses a deceptively simple question through the literary perspective of ancient Greece: How should human beings face death? For many veterans at Harvard, including myself, this question remains a complex familiarity that resonates with unusual immediacy. When you first enlist in the military, you raise your right hand and swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution, even at the cost of your own life. In many ways, it is a blank check written to every single American in the name of upholding freedom. Thus, every individual who has raised their right hand and recited this oath has, at one point or another, internally grappled with the concept of mortality.

GENED 1074: The Ancient Greek Hero examines this theme through the translations of Homer, Plato, Aeschylus, and even through analyzing visual art pieces in person at the Harvard Arts Museum. In ancient Greek thought, the hero was not heroic because they were invincible, but rather because they confronted death with clarity and purpose through the attainment of kleos (everlasting fame and glory) and aristeia (excellence; the culmination of the warrior in war). Achilles, for example, steps onto the battlefield during the ongoing Trojan War with the understanding that his inevitable mortality is fated. Yet, he chooses this path with prowess due to the kleos which awaits him – the transcendence of generational glory passed down in the form of story and song. As Professor Nagy continuously emphasized, this served as a way of giving mortal life meaning.

For me and other veterans in the classroom, the parallels between the heroes of ancient Greece and our own pursuit of kleos seemed infinite. Nearly every veteran I know at Harvard has enrolled in the course at some point during their undergraduate journey, and one of my closest friends even carried copies of the Iliad and the Odyssey with him throughout several combat deployments. The search for purpose amidst the face of danger, alongside the commitment to those beside you and the desire for a meaningful legacy, are experiences which transcend time and appear just as clearly in ancient epics as they do in modern military service.

The Ancient Greek Hero did not romanticize war or death, nor does the course suggest that ancient values should be uncritically applied today. Rather, the course provided an avenue for processing experiences which many have carried for years. The instinct to discover meaning amidst hardship and search for purpose in the face of mortality is deeply human, and far older than any conflict, nation, or uniform. To me, the lessons from the course are revelations that I will carry with me for the remainder of my life. They demonstrate the idea that, especially at a place like Harvard, the classroom serves a space where lived experiences enrich scholarly inquiry, with ancient text functioning as a tool for interconnection rather than distance. Its meaning is universal, and links the warriors of Homeric poetry to modern-day warriors walking across Harvard Yard.