Stanley Lombardo

Who is Stanley Lombardo?

Stanley F. Lombardo is an American professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. He is best known for his translations of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid. The style of his translations is a more vernacular one, emphasizing conversational English rather than the formal tone of some older American English translations of classical verse. Lombardo designs his translations to be performed orally, as they were in ancient Greece. He also performs the poems, and has recorded them as audio books. In performance he also likes to play the drums, much like Ezra Pound.

Of Italian ancestry, Lombardo is a native of New Orleans. He has a B.A. from Loyola University in New Orleans, an M.A. from Tulane University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas. In 1976 he joined the faculty at the University of Kansas, where he served as department chair for fifteen years and teaches Greek and Latin at all levels, as well as general courses on Greek literature and culture. He was appointed University of Kansas Honors Program director in 2004.

Lombardo is a Zen Buddhist. Along with his wife, Judith Roitman, he was a founding member of the Kansas Zen Center.