Alexander Dale, DPhil (Oxford)

I obtained my doctorate from the University of Oxford in 2009 with a dissertation on the lyric fragments of the Hellenistic poet Callimachus (including a new text based on a fresh examination of the papyri, prolegomena, and commentary), supervised by Adrian Hollis and Gregory Hutchinson. Subsequently I held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, with a research project on the interaction between Anatolian and Greek language, literature, and culture from the Late Bronze Age through to the mid-first millennium BCE. I continued this research with the tenure of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) postdoctoral fellowship held at Concordia University. After a year as Assistant Professor (Limited Term), I joined the permanent faculty of Concordia in Fall 2016.

Within the field of Classics my main areas of interest are Greek poetry of all periods, and particularly early epic, lyric, elegiac, and iambic poetry; Hellenistic poetry; Greek epigram; Greek literary papyrology; Greek metre; and the reception of Greek poetry in the Byzantine period.

In Linguistics my main areas of interest are in historical and Indo-European linguistics; the comparative grammar of Greek and Latin; the Anatolian branch of Indo-European, particularly Luwian, Lycian, and Lydian; historical phonology; PIE reconstruction and internal derivation; early, middle, and late PIE.

Much of my current research focuses on the intersection between Greek and Anatolian culture in the archaic through Hellenistic periods. 

Recent courses taught at Concordia include:

• Introductory Greek (CLAS 201-202)

• Intermediate Greek (Xenophon, Homer) (CLAS 383-384)

• Advanced Greek (Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Sophocles, Pindar) (CLAS 410-411)

• Greek Drama (CLAS 330)

• Greek Epic (CLAS 321)

• The Survival of Antiquity (CLAS 398)

• The World of the Hittites (CLAS 398)

• Bronze Age Aegean Archaeology (CLAS 267)

• Advanced Indo-European (LING 436)

• Problems in Indo-European Comparative Grammar (LING 437)

• Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin (LING 446)

• Mycenaean Greek (LING 447)

Articles and Book Chapters

20. “Reconstructing the Alexandrian editions of Sappho, Alcaeus, and Anacreon”, in B. Fehr and P. Roilos (eds.) Mythogenesis, Interdiscursivity, Ritual: Studies Presented to Demetrios Yatromanolakis (2024), 281–301.

19. “Alcaeus, Pittakos ‘son of “Hyrras”,’ and the Lesbian aristocracy, or ‘How to do things with words’”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 143 (2023), 49–68.

18. “αἰόλος”, Glotta 97 (2021), 73–82. 

17. “Gyges and Delphi: Herodotus 1.14”, Classical Quarterly 70 (2020), 518–23.

16. “Venus in Furs: Sappho fr. 101 Voigt between East and West”, in R. Kim, J. Mynářová, and P. Pavúk (eds.) Hrozný and Hittite: the First Hundred Years. Leiden and Boston (2019), 469–83.

15. “A feast fit for a eunuch: Hipponax frs. 26, 26a, and Martial 3.77”, Phoenix 71, 2017 [published in 2018], 215–29.

14. “Two new fragments of Anaxandrides in Hesychius?”, Classical Quarterly 68 (2018), 69–78.

13. “Notes on Hipponax fr. 104 W”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 205 (2018), 6–12.

12. “walwet and kukalim: Lydian coin legends, dynastic succession, and the chronology of Mermnad kings”, Kadmos 54 (2015 [2016]), 151–66.            

11. “Posidippus on the infamy of Doricha: Ep. XVII G-P = 122 A-B”, Classical Quarterly 66 (2016), 134–9.

10. “The Green papyrus of Sappho (P.GC inv. 105) and the order of poems in the Alexandrian edition”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 196 (2015), 17–30.

9. “Greek ethnics in -ηνος and the name of Mytilene”, in Nostoi: Indigenous Culture, Migration and Integration in the Aegean Islands and Western Anatolia during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Age. Ed. C. Stampolidis, Ç. Maner, and K. Kopanias. Istanbul 2015, 421–444.

8. “Hipponax fr. 42 IEG² = 7 Degani”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 187 (2013), 49–51.

7. “Sapphica”, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 106 (2011 [2012]), 47–74.

6. “Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Callimachus”, in Poesia, musica e agoni nella Grecia antica: Atti del IV convegno internazionale di ΜΟΙΣΑ. Ed. D. Castaldo, F. G. Giannachi, A. Manieri. Rudiae 22–23 (2010–2011 [2012]), 371–383.

5. “A Cypriot Curser at Mytilene” (co-authored with Aneurin Ellis-Evans), Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik179 (2011), 189–198.

4. “Alcaeus on the Career of Myrsilos: Greeks, Lydians, and Luwians at the East Aegean West Anatolian Interface”, Journal of Hellenic Studies 131 (2011), 15–24.

3. “Topics in Alcman’s Partheneion”, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 176 (2011), 24–38.

2. “Lyric Epigrams in Meleager’s Garland, the Anthologia Palatina, and the Anthologia Planudea”, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 50 (2010), 193–213.

1. “Galliambics by Callimachus”, Classical Quarterly 57 (2007), 775–81.

Reviews

4. Review of N. Hopkinson, A Hellenistic Anthology, (2^nd edition, Cambridge, 2020). Classical Review 72 (2022), 93–4

3. Review of L. Bettarini, Lingua e testo di Ipponatte (Pisa and Rome, 2017). Classical Review 68 (2018), 322–324

2. Review of M. Bachvarova, From Hittite to Homer: the Anatolian Background of Ancient Greek Epic (Cambridge, 2016). Classical Journal Online 2017.08.10

1. Review of A. Bierl and A. Lardinois (eds.), The Newest Sappho: P.Sapph.Obbink and P.GC inv. 105, Frs. 1–4 (Leiden and Boston, 2016). Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2017.08.32