Richard P. Martin
Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics
Stanford University
Homeric Poetry and Local Religion: Cults of Zeus in the Iliad
Thursday, November 9, 2017 at 7:00pm
Newman Alumni Center
6200 San Amaro Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146
Free & Open to the Public | Registration Required
For Herodotus, Homer played a major role in shaping Greek religion, in offering for the first time an account about the forms and titles of the gods and the honors due them. This lecture will examine the mutual enrichment of the oral performance of Homeric poetry and the religious notions held by local Greek communities. Their dynamic interaction can be illustrated by an examination of several cults of Zeus overtly alluded to--or latent yet still resonant--within the Homeric Iliad. Articulating this symbiotic relationship between poetry and religion can lead to a new appreciation of what might be called theological poetics, ancient as well as contemporary.
“Lattimore's rendition of Homer's Iliad with Richard Martin's introduction and notes is a fitting companion for students and readers first encountering the Iliad, Homer, Greek literature, and classical civilization. Martin not only situates the epic in its literary-historical and archaeological context, but also reminds us of the place of Lattimore's translation in the reception and translation of Homer.”
— Kristina Chew, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Richard P. Martin is the Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics at Stanford University. He interprets Greek poetry in the light of performance traditions and social practices. Professor Martin’s primary interests are in Homeric epic, Greek comedy, mythology, and ancient religion. His research is informed by comparative evidence ranging from fieldwork on oral traditions in contemporary Crete to studies in medieval Irish literature. Professor Martin’s honors include fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, Princeton’s Humanities Council, and the Stanford Humanities Center; he delivered the Sather Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall of 2014. He is the author of The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad (Cornell, 1989), Myths of the Ancient Greeks (Penguin/New American Library, 2003), and Classical Mythology: The Basics (Routledge, 2016). He wrote the introduction and commentary for the acclaimed translation of The Iliad of Homer by Richmond Lattimore (Chicago, 2011). He has also published numerous articles on Greek, Latin, and Irish literature, including, most recently, “Origins of Greek Myths at Dion: Divine Family in a Human Landscape” (2016).
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