The Center for Hellenic Studies is pleased to announce the third in our fall series of lectures in ancient history and archaeology. On Monday, October 27th, Dr. Sarah Murray, the Distinguished Professor Digital Humanities in the Department of Classics and Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, will give a lecture entitled “Men of Many Wiles: Homeric Heroes as Masters of International Finance.”

While the Late Bronze Age in the Mediterranean is widely considered to have been a time of bustling internationalism, when wealthy kings engaged in lucrative trade relations with distant peers across the watery ways, most scholars believe that elites of the succeeding Greek Dark Age engaged in little overseas trade besides occasional small-scale gift exchange and piracy. A more careful reading of the Homeric poems and the related archaeological evidence from Early Greece suggests that trade continued, albeit in an altered institutional setting, right through the Greek Dark Age, and that Homeric kings were direct heirs of the Late Bronze Age world system, in which trading was seen as a necessary, but ideologically problematic, activity that needed to be couched in a bombastic language of gift exchange. In this talk, proceeding from a review of the colorful debate between those who believe that the Iliad and Odyssey are works of pure fiction–and hence of little use for reconstructing the social, political, and economic reality of early Greece–and those seeking to uncover a kernel of historical truth at the core of the fantastical adventures of these epic heroes, Dr. Murray will argue that Odysseus and his fellow kings (basileis) should be seen as ambitious economic actors, not just reckless adventurers out for fame and fortune on the high seas.

The lecture will begin at 4:30pm in the New Troy Moore Library, on the 23rd floor at 25 Park Place (the old Sun Trust building) on the Georgia State University campus.

There will be food and refreshments served before and after the lecture; this event is free and open to the public. Click to view event flyer.