Craig A. Gibson is professor of Classics, and has been with the department since 1999. He teaches courses in Latin and Greek literature at all levels.

Craig Gibson studies ancient Greek and Latin oratory, rhetoric, and prose fiction (“novels”). For the past twenty years he has focused on ancient and medieval Greek rhetorical education, which has led him to write on such disparate topics as the moral and societal implications of rhetorical training, and the portrayal of doctors, artists, good dogs, and mythological and biblical characters in textbooks and classroom exercises. He most enjoys the challenges of researching and translating texts that have never before been translated into English, including a medieval Latin treatise on arithmetic with Hindu-Arabic numerals, Didymus’ commentaries on the orator Demosthenes, collections of model rhetorical exercises, and medieval prose fiction. His articles have been published in journals including Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, Classical Philology, Classical Quarterly, Journal of Late Antiquity, and Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies.

Prof. Gibson has recently published several articles on John of Alta Silva’s Dolopathos, a novel written in Latin by a French Cistercian monk near the end of the 12^th century:

• “Bertram of Metz and John of Alta Silva: Law and Blindness in Dolopathos (De rege et septem sapientibus),” Mediaevalia (forthcoming).
• “When Storyworlds Collide: The Influence of Barlaam and Josaphat on John of Alta Silva’s Dolopathos (De rege et septem sapientibus),” The Journal of Medieval Latin 35 (2025) 123-154. 
• “Vergil and St. Paul in John of Alta Silva’s Dolopathos (De rege et septem sapientibus),” Vergilius 70 (2024) 73-98.

His current project is a translation of the Chronicon of George the Monk, a world history written in Greek covering the period from Creation to 842 CE. George presents an account of ancient history from Adam to Michael III, including many edifying short stories and discussions of theology. The book is under contract with Liverpool University Press for their series “Translated Texts for Byzantinists."

View his CV here

Representative publications:

• J. Beneker and C.A. Gibson, eds. and trans., The Byzantine Sinbad: Michael Andreopoulos (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 67. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2021).
• J. Beneker and C.A. Gibson, eds. and trans., The Rhetorical Exercises of Nikephoros Basilakes: Progymnasmata from Twelfth-Century Byzantium (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 43. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press, 2016).
• “Better Living through Prose Composition? Moral and Compositional Pedagogy in Ancient Greek Progymnasmata,” Rhetorica 32.1 (2014) 1-30.
• “Doctors in Ancient Greek and Roman Rhetorical Education,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 68.4 (2013) 529-550. (doi: 10.1093/jhmas/jrs027)
• “True or False? Greek Myth and Mythography in the Progymnasmata,” in R.S. Smith and S.M. Trzaskoma, eds., Writing Myth: Mythography in the Greek and Roman Worlds (Leuven, 2013), 289-308.

Professor Gibson received a B.A. in Classics from Rhodes College and a Ph.D. in Classical Studies from Duke University.

He is a Collegiate Scholar in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.