Barry Bruce Powell (born 1942) is an American classical scholar who is the author of the textbook ''Classical Myth.'' Trained at Berkeley and

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

, he is a specialist in

Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...

and in the history of writing. Powell is currently the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the

University of Wisconsin–Madison The University of Wisconsin–Madison (University of Wisconsin, Wisconsin, UW, UW–Madison, or simply Madison) is a public land-grant research university in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. It was founded in 1848 when Wisconsin achieved st ...

Works

Powell's study ''Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet'' advances the controversial thesis that a single man invented the

Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BC. It was derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and is the earliest known alphabetic script to systematically write vowels as wel ...

expressly in order to record the poems of Homer. His ''Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization'' (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) rejects the standard theories of the origins of both

Sumerian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo- syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts are marked by and ...

and the

Phoenician alphabet The Phoenician alphabet is an abjad (consonantal alphabet) used across the Mediterranean civilization of Phoenicia for most of the 1st millennium BC. It was one of the first alphabets, attested in Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions fo ...

as deriving from pictograms. He attempts to create a scientific terminology and taxonomy for the study of writing. Powell has also translated a number of works, including the ''

Iliad The ''Iliad'' (; , ; ) is one of two major Ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest extant works of literature still widely read by modern audiences. As with the ''Odyssey'', the poem is divided into 24 books and ...

'',Review by Hayden Pelliccia, "As Many Homers as you Please", ''New York Review of Books'' (20 November 2017) the ''

Odyssey The ''Odyssey'' (; ) is one of two major epics of ancient Greek literature attributed to Homer. It is one of the oldest surviving works of literature and remains popular with modern audiences. Like the ''Iliad'', the ''Odyssey'' is divi ...

'', the ''

Aeneid The ''Aeneid'' ( ; or ) is a Latin Epic poetry, epic poem that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Troy, Trojan who fled the Trojan War#Sack of Troy, fall of Troy and travelled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Ancient Rome ...

'' and the poems of

Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

. His ''Greek Poems to the Gods'' includes translation and commentary on Greek hymns from Homer to

Proclus Proclus Lycius (; 8 February 412 – 17 April 485), called Proclus the Successor (, ''Próklos ho Diádokhos''), was a Greek Neoplatonist philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity. He set forth one of th ...

Books

* ''Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet'', Cambridge University Press, 1991 * ''Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature'', Cambridge University Press, 2003 * ''Homer'', Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, 2nd ed. 2007 * ''Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization'', Wiley-Blackwell, 2009 * ''Classical Myth'', eighth edition, Pearson, 2014

Translations

* ''The Iliad'', Oxford University Press, 2013 * ''The Odyssey'', Oxford University Press, 2014 * ''Vergil's Aeneid'', Oxford University Press, 2015 * ''The Poems of Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, the Shield of Heracles'', University of California Press 2017 * ''Greek Poems to the Gods'', University of California Press, 2021

Notes and references

External links

Personal page at University of Wisconsin–Madison (archived 2012)
American classical scholars Living people American classical philologists Classical scholars of the University of Wisconsin–Madison 1942 births Translators of Homer Homeric scholars {{Classical-philologist-stub