Marcel Detienne

Marcel Detienne (October 11, 1935 in Liège, Belgium – March 21, 2019 in Nemours, France)[1] was a Belgian historian and specialist in the study of ancient Greece.

He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University, where he held the Basil L. Gildersleeve chair in Classics.

Along with Jean-Pierre Vernant and Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Detienne has sought to apply an anthropological approach, informed by the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss, to classical and archaic Greece.

Detienne was at one time a directeur d'études at the École pratique des hautes études, where he taught until 1998.

He was also a founder of the Centre de recherches comparées sur les sociétés anciennes in Paris.