Barry Bruce Powell (born 1942) is an American classical scholar who is the author of the textbook Classical Myth. Trained at Berkeley and Harvard, he is a specialist in Homer and in the history of writing. Powell is currently the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.[1]

Works

Powell's study Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet advances the controversial thesis that a single man invented the Greek alphabet expressly in order to record the poems of Homer.[2] His Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) rejects the standard theories of the origins of both Sumerian cuneiform and the Phoenician alphabet as deriving from pictograms.[3] and attempts to create a scientific terminology and taxonomy for the study of writing.

Powell has also translated a number of works, including the Iliad,[4] the Odyssey, the Aeneid and the poems of Hesiod. His Greek Poems to the Gods includes translation and commentary on Greek hymns from Homer to Proclus.

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

  1. ↑ "Powell, Barry". Classical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies. 25 April 2017. Retrieved 30 September 2023.
  2. ↑ "When the Ancient Greeks Began to Write", Archaeology, pp. 44–49 (May/June 2017)
  3. ↑ Powell 2009, chapter 14; Review by L. R. Siddall
  4. ↑ Review by Hayden Pelliccia, "As Many Homers as you Please", New York Review of Books (20 November 2017)
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