Barry B. Powell

Barry B. Powell is the Halls-Bascom Professor of Classics Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, author of the widely used textbook Classical Myth and many other books. Trained at Berkeley and Harvard, he is a specialist in Homer and in the history of writing. He has also taught Egyptian philology for many years and courses in Egyptian civilization.

His Writing: Theory and History of the Technology of Civilization (Wiley-Blackwell 2009) attempts to create a scientific terminology and taxonomy for the study of writing, and was described in Science as "stimulating and impressive" and "a worthy successor to the pioneering book by Semitic specialist I. J. Gelb." This book has been translated into Arabic and modern Greek.

Powell's study Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet advances the thesis that a single man invented the Greek alphabet expressly in order to record the poems of Homer. This thesis is controversial. The book was the subject of an international conference in Berlin in 2002 and has been influential outside classical philology, especially in media studies. Powell's Writing and the Origins of Greek Literature follows up themes broached by the thesis.

Powell's textbook, Classical Myth (8th edition) is widely used for classical myth courses in America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Taiwan, as his text The Greeks: History, Culture, Society (with Ian Morris) is widely used in ancient history classes. His text World Myth is popular in such courses.

Powell's critical study Homer is widely read as an introduction for philologists, historians, and students of literature. It is in its second edition and has been translated into Italian.

A New Companion to Homer (with Ian Morris), also translated into modern Greek and Chinese, is a comprehensive review of modern scholarship on Homer.

His literary works include poetry (Rooms Containing Falcons), an autobiography (Ramses in Nighttown), a mock-epic (The War at Troy: A True History), an academic novel (A Land of Slaves: A Novel of the American Academy), a novel about Berkeley (The Berkeley Plan: A Novel of the Sixties), and a collection of short fiction.

He has translated the Iliad and the Odyssey. The introduction to these poems discusses Powell's thesis about the Greek alphabet and the recording of Homer and is an influential review of modern Homeric criticism. He has also translated the Aeneid and the poems of Hesiod.

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