Martin Litchfield West
| Martin Litchfield West | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
23 September 1937 London, England |
| Died | 13 July 2015 (aged 77) Oxford, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Alma mater | Balliol College, Oxford |
| Occupation | Professor, academic and author |
| Known for | Classics scholar |
| Honours | OM |
Martin Litchfield West, OM, FBA (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a classical scholar, acknowledged, on receipt of the Kenyon Medal for Classical Studies from the British Academy, as "the most brilliant and productive Greek scholar of his generation, not just in the United Kingdom, but worldwide." At the time of his death he was an Honorary Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford.
He wrote extensively on ancient Greek music, Greek tragedy, Greek lyric poetry, the relations between Greece and the ancient Near East, and the connection between shamanism and early ancient Greek religion, including the Orphic tradition. This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin.
In 2001, West produced an edition of Homer's Iliad for Teubner, accompanied by a study of its critical tradition and overall philology, entitled Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad; a further volume on The Making of the Iliad appeared ten years later for Oxford University Press, and one on "The Making of the Odyssey" in 2014.
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