Daniel Berman

Daniel Berman

  • College of Liberal Arts

    Greek and Roman Classics

    Professor

  • Office of the Provost

    Vice Provost - Undergraduate Studies

Office Location

500 Conwell Hall

Expertise

Ancient Greek, Mythology and mythography, Greeks in the Roman world, Topography

Biography

Daniel W. Berman earned his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his Ph.D. from Yale, both in Classics. His research interests include archaic and classical Greek poetry and myth, mythography, Greeks in the Roman world, and topography and ancient geography. His current research project, “Rome in Greek,” focuses on Greek writers’ representations of the city of Rome during the Principate. His most recent book, Myth, Literature, and the Creation of the Topography of Thebes (Cambridge 2015) explores how Greek mythic texts construct and represent the urban environment of Greek Thebes. He has published articles on the Greek mythographers, Aeschylus, the city of Thebes, the Dirce spring, and related subjects, and also one on herdsmen in Theocritus. His first book, Myth and Culture in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, was published in 2007 by Edizioni dell’Ateneo, and he is translator from French of a book by Claude Calame, Myth and History in Ancient Greece: The Symbolic Creation of a Colony (Princeton 2003). Dan teaches courses in Greek and Latin language and literature, classical myth, and ancient civilization and culture. He also maintains a teaching interest in Roman archaeology and topography. In 2012-2013 he was Andrew W. Mellon Professor-In-Charge at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome, where he had taught previously as an assistant professor in 2001-2002 and was also lucky enough to study as an undergraduate.

Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

  • "Local Mythography,” in Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Mythography, R. S. Smith and S. Trzaskoma, eds. (Oxford University Press 2022)
  • “Cities-before-cities: ‘prefoundational’ myth and the construction of Greek civic space,” chapter in Myths on the Map: The Storied Landscapes of Ancient Greece, G. Hawes, ed.  Oxford 2017 , pp. 32-51.
  • Myth, Literature, and the Creation of the Topography of Thebes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2015).
  • Myth and Culture in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes. Filologia e critica 95. (Roma: Edizioni dell’Ateneo 2007).
  • “Greek Thebes in the Early Mythographic Tradition,” chapter in Writing Myth: Mythography in the Ancient World, R. S. Smith and S. Trzaskoma, edd. (Peeters 2013), pp. 37-54.
  • “A Few Words for Springs in Aeschylus,” in Studies in Classical Linguistics in Honor of Philip Baldi, B. R. Page and A. D. Rubin, edd. (Brill 2010), pp. 1-5.
  • “The Landscape and Language of Korinna,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 50 (2010): 41-62.
  • “Dirce at Thebes,” Greece & Rome 54 (2007): 18-39.

Courses Taught

  • Ancient Greek and Latin
  • The Greeks
  • Classical Mythology
  • Sacred Space in Ancient Greece
  • Ancient City: Rome