Professor Eric Csapo
Eric Csapo is a Classicist with expertise on ancient myth, theatre and cultural history. He was trained in Classics, Law and Archaeology at the University of British Columbia, the University of Kiel, McGill University, the University of Toronto and the American School of Classical Studies.
Professor Csapo has excavated in Athens, Lesbos and Crete. After holding positions at the University of Toronto (1984-2005) and the University of Sydney (2005-2019), he took up a British Academy Global Professorship at the University of Warwick in 2018, which he currently holds. He has published on such diverse subjects as ancient cockfighting, the Dionysian Parade, Roman mosaics, the musical imagery of Euripides, and the sociology of James Frazer’s savage.
In collaboration with Professor Peter Wilson of Sydney and Cambridge, he is currently researching and writing the third volume of A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC: Theatre People and Patrons (volume 1, Theatre in Athens, is nearly complete and volume 2, Theatre Beyond Athens, was published in 2020 by Cambridge University Press).
At Clare Hall, Eric is accompanied by his wife, Margaret Miller, Emerita Professor at the University of Sydney – an archaeologist and leading expert on Greco-Persian cultural relations in the 6th-4th century BC.
Select publications
- Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World (de Gruyter, Berlin 2022). Co-edited with H.R. Goette, B. Le Guen, E. Paillard, J. Stoop, and P. Wilson
- A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC, volume II: Theatre beyond Athens (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2020). 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 Origins of Theater in Ancient Greece and Elsewhere: From Ritual to Drama (Cambridge UP, New York 2007). Jointly edited with M. Miller
- The Dionysian Parade and the Poetics of Plenitude (Department 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)
- The Context of Ancient Drama (University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor 1995). Co-authored with W.J. Slater
Select awards
- British Academy Global Professorship, 2019-23
- Senior Fellow and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow of the European Union, Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, University of Freiburg, 2019
- Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2016-
- Corresponding Member of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, 2013-
