Scholars@Duke
William Johnson

William Johnson

Professor of Classical Studies
Classical Studies
william.johnson@duke.edu
Box 90103, Durham, NC 27708-0103
236 Allen Building, Durham, NC 27708
Office hours On leave 2024-25.  

Featured Works

From Bookroll to Codex

Book section · 2025 Featured Publication The first part of this overview of ancient books in the Graeco-Roman world focuses on the details of scribal production for papyrus rolls containing ancient literary texts (‘bookrolls’), so as to give a clear view of the regularities of format and conventi ... Cite

Punctuation, Iota Adscript, and Nu-movable in Ancient Literary Bookrolls

Book · 2025 Featured Publication A close study of scribal features for 400 ancient Greek literary papyri in bookroll format. ... Link to item Cite

Ancient Books Website

Digital publication · 2025 Featured Publication The Ancient Books Website (ABW) joins a long tradition of open- access tools for papyrological research. The website provides data complementary to those in tools like the Leuven Database of Ancient Books (LDAB), now part of Trismegistos (TM), and the Digi ... Link to item Cite

Ptolemaic Mummy Stuffings, 3: The Documentary Texts (Beinecke P.CtYBR inv. 5058, 5059, 5060, 5061, 5062, 5063)

Journal article Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik · 2018 Featured Publication Cite

Isidora to Apollonia: a Private Letter in the Beinecke Collection (P.CtYBR inv. 5044)

Journal article Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik · 2018 Featured Publication Cite

Oxford Handbook to the Second Sophistic

Book · 2017 Featured Publication Cite

Imperial Pantomime and Satoshi Miyagi’s Medea

Journal article Didaskalia · 2017 Featured Publication Open Access Link to item Cite

The Essential Herodotus

Book · 2016 Featured Publication Cite

Ptolemaic Mummy Stuffings: An Intriguing Scholar’s Text in the Yale Collection (P.CtYBR 5018)

Journal article Archiv für Papyrusforschung · 2016 Featured Publication Open Access Cite

Ptolemaic Mummy Stuffings, 2: A Comic Fragment and Grammatical Text in the Yale Collection (P.CtYBR inv. 5019, 5043)

Journal article Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik · 2016 Featured Publication This is the second installment of a three-part project to publish a group of ten Ptolemaic papyri purchased by Yale’s Beinecke Library in 1998 (acquisition “1998b”), which came to the Beinecke as three hard wads that were apparently the stuffing from the s ... Open Access Cite

Learning to Read and Write

Book section · 2015 Featured Publication Cite

Libraries and Reading Culture in the High Empire

Book section · 2013 Featured Publication Cite

Bookrolls as media

Book section · January 1, 2013 Featured Publication Cite

Pliny Epistle. 9.36 and Demosthenes' Cave

Journal article Classical World · 2013 Featured Publication Cite

The Oxyrhynchus Distributions in America: Papyri and Ethics

Journal article BASP · 2012 Featured Publication Cite

Cicero and Tyrannio: Mens addita videtur meis aedibus (ad Atticum iv.8.2)

Journal article Classical World · 2012 Featured Publication Cite

Readers and Reading Culture in the High Roman Empire: A Study of Elite Communities

Book · May 1, 2010 Featured Publication Readers and Reading Culture in the High Empire examines the system and culture of reading among the elite in second-century Rome. The focus is on deep sociocultural contextualization for reading events within specific communities, and thus the investigatio ... Full text Cite

Teaching the Children How to Read: The Syllabary

Journal article Classical Journal · 2010 Featured Publication Cite

The Ancient Book

Book section · 2009 Featured Publication Cite

Hesiod's Theogony: Reading the Proem as a Priamel

Journal article Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies · 2008 Featured Publication Cite

The Posidippus Papyrus: Bookroll and Reader

Book section · 2005 Featured Publication Cite

Bookrolls and scribes in oxyrhynchus

Book · January 1, 2003 Featured Publication Lying now under the sand 300 kilometres south of the coastal metropolis of Alexandria, the town of Oxyrhynchus rose to prominence under Egypt’s Hellenistic and Roman rulers. The 1895 British-led excavation revealed little in the way of buildings and other ... Cite

Toward a sociology of reading in classical antiquity

Journal article American Journal of Philology · 2000 Featured Publication Cite

Musical Evenings in the Early Empire: New Evidence from a Greek Papyrus with Musical Notation

Journal article Journal of Hellenic Studies · 2000 Featured Publication Cite

Dramatic Frame and Philosophic Idea in Plato

Journal article The American Journal of Philology · 1998 Featured Publication Cite

Oral Performance and the Composition of Herodotus' Histories

Journal article Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies · 1994 Featured Publication Cite