Professor Richard P. Martin teaches Greek and Latin literature at Stanford. Martin's research focuses primarily on Homeric poetry and how it functioned as a performance art in ancient Greece. His research has involved fieldwork in modern Crete, interviewing those who still perform traditional oral epics. In addition,he has studied resemblances between ancient oral poetry and modern rap. He has worked on presenting Homer digitally, in a full-scale multimedia version of the Odyssey on CD, in connection with distance learning projects. Martin is also interested in the performance of Greek lyric as represented in myth and art, and the analysis of Greek myth.

Prof. Martin is currently working on three books: Homeric Religion; Comic Community (about the social contexts of comic productions in ancient Athens); and Homer Abroad, about Greek epic as compared with other ancient and contemporary epic traditions.

Born and raised in Boston, he studied Classics as well as Medieval and Modern Irish language and literature at Harvard University where he received his B.A. in Classics and Celtic Literature and M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Philology. Prior to his position at Stanford, Professor Martin taught Classics for eighteen years at Princeton University. He was the Chair of the Classics department at Stanford from 2002 through 2008.