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. Work 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."When the Ancient Greeks Began to Write", Archaeology, pp. 44–49 (May/June 2017) 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.Powell 2009, chapter 14; Review by L. R. Siddall 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,Review by Hayden Pelliccia, "As Many Homers as you Please", New York Review of Books (20 November 2017) 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.
Bibliography 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)