Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professors Lecture Series
Center for the Humanities

Homeric Poetry and Local Religion: Cults of Zeus in the Iliad

Dr. Richard Martin
Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics Stanford University

November 9, 2017

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.

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Symposium

Homer and His Legacy

November 10, 2017

Homer and His Legacy takes its inception, and indeed its inspiration, from the many themes that inform the work of the Henry King Stanford Distinguished Professor Richard P. Martin, Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics, Stanford University. The conference covers many aspects of Homer’s influence from Hesiod in the following generation, through Greek and Roman thought and literature, and the early Christian religion and culture of the Ancient Mediterranean world.

Greetings: John Paul Russo, Professor and Chair, Department of Classics, University of Miami

Welcome: William Scott Green, Senior Vice Provost, Dean of Undergraduate Education, University of Miami

First Panel Chair: Wilson Shearin, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Miami

Papers:
Han Tran, Senior Lecturer in Classics, University of Miami: “Homer’s Disembodied Siren.”
Jonathan Ready, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Indiana University – Bloomington: “Minor Characters in the Iliad.”
José M. González, Associate Professor of Classical Studies, Duke University: “Homeric Contexts for Hesiodic Poetry?”

Response: Richard P. Martin, Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics, Stanford University

Second Panel Chair: John Kirby, Professor of Classics, University of Miami

Papers:
Margaret Foster, Assistant Professor of Classical Studies, Indiana University – Bloomington: “Delphi and the Mantic Inheritance of Alkmaion.”
Rebecca Katz, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Miami: “Spoliis indute meorum: On the Re-Use of Arms and Armor in Homer and Virgil.”
Jennifer Ferriss-Hill, Associate Professor of Classics, University of Miami: “Good Homer Nods? Confronting Tradition in Horace’s Ars Poetica.”
Amy Koenig, Visiting Assistant Professor of Classics, University of Miami: “Refractions of the Homeric Hymn to Pan in Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe.”

Response: Richard P. Martin, Antony and Isabelle Raubitschek Professor of Classics, Stanford University

Third Panel Chair: John Paul Russo, Professor of Classics, University of Miami

Papers:
Dexter Callender, Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Miami: “Theoxeny between Homer and the Hebrew Bible.”
Robyn Walsh, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Miami: “Romantic Imagination and Oral Tradition in Christian Literature”
Peter A. O’Connell, Assistant Professor of Classics and Communication Studies, University of Georgia: “Homer’s Legacy in the Poetry of Gregory of Nazianzus.”

Q&A

Dr. Richard Martin