Prof. Dr. Eric Csapo – Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies

Prof. Dr. Eric Csapo

University of Sydney
Classics

External Senior Fellow
Marie S. Curie FCFP Fellow
January – June 2019

Last Update: 31.08.2019

Curriculum Vitae

I studied Classical languages, history and literature at the University of British Columbia (BA 1977) and the University of Toronto (MA 1981, PhD 1987), and archaeology at the University of Toronto and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (1982/3). I was appointed Assistant (1989-94) and Associate Professor (1994-2005) at the University of Toronto. I became Professor of Clasics at the University of Sydney in 2005. I have published widely on ancient myth, Greek literature and culture and Greek and Roman drama. Since 2005 I have been collaborating with my Sydney colleague Peter Wilson on a new history of the ancient theatre from Archaic to Early Hellenistic times with a particular interest in social and economic aspects of the institution. The primary publication of this new research will be three linked volumes, of which the second volume, Theatre Beyond Athens, is now in press. In Freiburg I will complete Volume 1 (second to appear) which will be the first comprehensive reconstruction of the dramatic festivals in Classical Athens in over sixty years.

Selected Publications

Theatre Beyond Athens. A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC, vol. 2. (CUP, Cambridge, in press). Co-authored with P. Wilson.
Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century BC (Walter de Gruyter, Berlin/Boston 2014). Jointly edited with H.R. Goette, J.R. Green, and Peter Wilson
The Dionysian Parade and the Poetics of Plenitude (Dept. of Greek and Latin, UC, London 2013).
Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theater (Wiley/ Blackwell, Malden MA/ Oxford 2010).
Theories of Mythology (Blackwell, Oxford 2005).

FRIAS Project

The Dramatic Festivals of Athens

The project involves a re-collection and re-evaluation of the evidence for the structure, funding, organisation and social importance of the three dramatic festivals of the city of Athens from the Late Archaic to Early Hellenistic period (ca. 500-300 BC). This is the first serious reconsideration of the topic in half a century, and the first ever to include extensive discussion of economic, social and political aspects of the festivals. Specifically, my time in Freiburg will bring to completion Theatre in Athens, volume 1 of A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC, the second to be completed of a three-volume work on which I have been working, in collaboration with my colleague Peter Wilson, for the past 13 years. (The other volumes explore the spread of theatre throughout the Eastern Mediterranean until ca. 300 BC [vol. 2, now in press], and the personnel and patrons of the ancient theatre [vol. 3]). The series is being published by Cambridge University Press. My principal contribution to volume 1 are the sections on the content, context, organisation and administration of the Athenian Dionysia and Lenaea.