A History of the American School of Classical Studies, 1882-1942
Chapter I: The Founding of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Chairmanship of John Williams White of Harvard University, 1881–1887
“. . . . that noble archaeological enterprise in which I take a deeper interest than might be guessed from my pecuniary neutrality—up to the present time—a result of charitable leakages about as many as I can keep afloat with.” Oliver Wendell Holmes to Charles Eliot Norton
The American School of Classical Studies at Athens was a product of the brain of that remarkable American man of letters, Charles Eliot Norton. In his account of the founding of the School he says,
“The chief motive which had led me to undertake this task [the founding of the Archaeological Institute of America] was the hope that, by the establishment of such a society, the interests of classical scholarship in America might be advanced, and especially that it might lead to the foundation of a school of classical studies in Athens where young scholars might carry on the study of Greek thought and life to the best advantage, and where those who were proposing to become teachers of Greek might gain such acquaintance with the land and such knowledge of its ancient monuments as should give a quality to their teaching unattainable without this experience.”
It is thus clear that one of the chief reasons that moved Norton to establish the Archaeological Institute was a belief that an American school in Athens for the study of the classics would be of the greatest importance in maintaining and increasing an interest in classical art and literature, to which he was so deeply devoted.
Charles Eliot Norton belonged to that remarkable group of men whose literary labors caused the “flowering of New England.” He was not known to so large a circle as Longfellow or Holmes or Lowell, but his interests were wider than those of any of these men except perhaps Lowell, and his influence on his own times and the next generation was, if not so evident, more profound.
Two volumes of his letters have been published, and in the Houghton Library at Harvard there are more than fifty boxes of letters written to him. The series begins in 1833 and continues till his death in 1908. These reveal an almost unbelievable variety of interests. There are letters—often long series of letters—from the most varied types of correspondents: Dante scholars, college students, patrons of art, politicians, historians, contributors, and wishful contributors, to The Atlantic Monthly, architects, editors. In the literary and artistic world of the nineteenth century there is no name that is not represented here. He knew and was esteemed by every writer and artist of his day. There was nothing local or provincial in his tastes. He wrote an appreciative critique of Kipling’s poems. It was another Atlantic editor who declined to print the “Recessional” because it contained the ugly word “shard.”
It is literally true that there was scarcely a worthy cause during his long life that did not elicit his sympathy. And to arouse his sympathy was to secure his active help. The Dante Society, the protection of Niagara Falls, the student who needed financial help and the architecture of Harvard University that needed help of another sort, the struggling author, the puzzled teacher—to all appeals, to individuals and to causes he lent unsparingly the support of his ever young spirit. “A renewal of friendship with you is like a renewal of youth,” wrote Lord Acton.
Norton’s influence on the artistic life of the nation through the long list of his pupils at Harvard was immeasurable. It was he who inspired Winthrop to make the unique collection of Chinese art objects which he has recently given to the Fogg Museum. Another pupil, Charles C. Stillman, founded the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard.
Through Norton’s influence and that of John Williams White, James Loeb was moved to found the Charles Eliot Norton Fellowship at Harvard for study at the School in Athens and to endow the great Loeb Library of classical authors. The Archaeological Institute of America and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens were not his chief interest. In a sense they were only incidental to his larger purpose—to foster in his country a sound appreciation for art. Yet perhaps nothing that he did had so great an influence on American education as the founding of these two institutions, monumentum aere perennius.
Associated with Norton in the founding of the School was a remarkable group of classical scholars and business men interested in the classics.
The success of the undertaking owed much to the enthusiasm and good advice of Frederic J. de Peyster of New York, who, visiting Greece in 1867, had demonstrated his hardihood by including Thebes in his itinerary, a place which was then avoided by travelers because it was infested by brigands, as it is now avoided by travelers for another, and what Herodotus would term “a certain sacred,” reason. De Peyster had later visited Greece in 1871, 1872 and 1879. He served on the Managing Committee of the School from its organization in 1881 to his death in 1905 and acted as its Treasurer from 1882 to 1895. He was a member of the Board of Trustees from the incorporation of the School in 1886 till his death.
Thomas W. Ludlow, of Yonkers, and General Francis W. Palfrey, of Boston, were also extremely helpful. The former had spent the winter of 1879–1880 with his family in Greece in company with De Peyster and equalled him in his enthusiastic support of the enterprise. He was Secretary of the Managing Committee from its inception till his death in 1894.
While these three lovers of Greece were most helpful to Norton in promoting the School in its early stages, in the beginning and in fact till the School was firmly established he leaned most heavily on that great teacher and brilliant scholar, John Williams White.
In April, 1879, Norton had sent out a circular letter signed by “eleven persons, representing the scholarship, the intelligence and the wealth of our community,” proposing the establishment of a society for the “purpose of furthering and directing archaeological investigation and research.” This led to the organization of the Archaeological Institute of America at two meetings held May 10 and May 17, 1879. The establishment of the School at Athens—one of Norton’s chief aims in organizing the Institute—was not to be delayed.
After presenting the first annual report of the Institute in May, 1880, Norton added,
France and Germany have their schools at Athens, where young scholars devote themselves, under the guidance of eminent masters, to studies and research in archaeology. The results that have followed from this training have been excellent; and it is greatly to be desired, for the sake of American scholarship, that a similar American School may before long enter into honorable rivalry with those already established.
When the second annual report was presented, on May 21, 1881, the establishment of the School was further urged, and a committee was appointed to draft a practical plan. So promptly did Norton accomplish his purpose.
The committee appointed consisted of five persons: Professors John Williams White and N. W. Gurney, of Harvard ; Professor Albert Harkness of Brown University; and Messrs. Ludlow and Palfrey. Professor White was chairman, and the ultimate success of the undertaking was due to his untiring energy, enthusiasm and sound judgment, displayed in securing the necessary funds to promote the School and maintain it in spite of all the vexing problems that arose during the first six trying years. Professor Gurney’s connection with the School was tenuous. He never attended a meeting of the Managing Committee after its organization and resigned in November, 1883. Professor Harkness of Brown, on the other hand, was a faithful attendant at the meetings of the Committee and was a member till his death, in 1907.
This committee of five held its first meeting in Cambridge promptly—a month after its appointment—on June 22,1881. Norton’s choice of White to create the School of which he had dreamed was at once justified.
Two plans for establishing the School were presented: to defer the establishment of the School till one hundred thousand dollars (so modest was the plan at first) could be secured, or to open the School immediately under the auspices and with the contributions of a few of the leading colleges. The committee adjourned without reaching a decision, but so eager was White to see the School a reality that “gentlemen in authority” in several institutions were consulted as to the possibility of securing annual subsidies for the support of the School. The favorable interest of Harvard and Brown was already guaranteed by the presence on the Committee of White and Harkness. At Yale, Professor Lewis R. Packard answered in the affirmative. He had visited Greece briefly in 1858 with Timothy Dwight (later President of Yale) and William Wheeler and had later (1866–1867) spent an entire academic year attending lectures at the University of Athens and in the study of Greek sites. There he had met Frederic de Peyster. Professor Basil L. Gilder-sleeve of Johns Hopkins gladly guaranteed the new School his hearty support, and though he was rarely present at the meetings of the Managing Committee (at only one meeting, the second, during White’s chairmanship), the immense prestige of his name as a member of the Committee and of the Board of Trustees, from its organization in 1886 till his death in 1924, was very helpful. Professor William Gardner Hale vouched for Cornell University, but he did not join the Managing Committee till 1885.
The organizing committee was greatly strengthened by the addition in October of De Peyster, probably at the suggestion of Ludlow, who remembered his association with him in Greece.
With tentative endorsements from these five colleges, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Johns Hopkins and Cornell, White called a meeting of his committee in Boston, March 5, 1881. The second plan, involving the immediate opening of the School, was approved. A statement of the plan and purposes of the School was drawn up and sent with a letter dated at Cambridge, December 20, 1881, to the Presidents of Harvard, Yale, Brown, Amherst, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, College of the City of New York, University of Michigan, Columbia, University of Virginia, College of New Jersey (Princeton) and later to Union, Trinity, Wesleyan and Dartmouth.
The prospectus stated that the American School of Classical Literature, Art and Antiquities, founded by the Archaeological Institute of America, would eventually require an endowment of one hundred thousand dollars and a suitable building, that it would be controlled by a Managing Committee chosen by the Institute, that a director would be appointed by this committee, that qualified students would be accepted, that each one would be required to present a thesis annually, and that at the end of a three-year course the student would receive from the director a certificate attesting the scope and character of his work. It was hoped that the Institute might arrange for an illustrated periodical issued regularly, similar to the Bulletin of the French School and the Mitteilungen of the German School.
The permanent School building was erected during the years 1887–1888; the endowment fund did not reach one hundred thousand dollars till 1903; the Managing Committee was never appointed by the Institute but was from the beginning an independent co-opting body; the “course of three years” (probably analogous to the course for a doctor of philosophy) was never developed; and the School periodical had to wait for the establishment of Hesperia under the chairmanship of Capps in 1931. But the vision was there, a beginning had been made, and the founders were building better than they knew.
The covering letter asked for temporary support—a guarantee of $250 a year for ten years or until a permanent fund could be secured. It stated that “gentlemen connected with Harvard” had pledged such a sum and asked that the cooperating colleges raise each a similar sum from their alumni. Participation by the college from its own funds was not suggested, though that has proved to be the usual practice. It was further asked that the cooperating colleges provide fellowships to enable their students to attend the School in Athens. The director was to be appointed from the faculties of the supporting colleges, and his salary was to be continued by the college during his residence in Athens. This tradition has been loyally perpetuated by the colleges, applying at first to the annual director and later to the annual and visiting professors.
Just how the colleges thus circularized were selected to receive invitations is not clear. Apparently some time after they had been sent White received a letter from Professor James C. Van Benschoten of Wesleyan, asking that his college be allowed to assist in the support of the School. A similar inquiry was received from Professor John Henry Wright of Dartmouth. Somewhat puzzled, White consulted Norton, vouching for the scholarship of Van Benschoten and his interest in Greece, and the age, if not the standing, of his college (“the oldest Methodist college in the country”). He had also consulted Gurney, who averred that Wesleyan “is a good college, and when a college comes forward and manifests interest in this manner it ought to be allowed to assist.” White remarks that Dartmouth will be a similar case, and he thinks that “we must devise some scheme by which any decent college that wishes to forward the interests of the School may do so.” Evidently Norton agreed, for invitations were subsequently sent to Wesleyan, Dartmouth, Union and Trinity—bringing the total to fifteen.
Several favorable replies had been received early in 1882, enough so that White and Norton, taking their courage in their hands, asked Professor William Watson Goodwin of Harvard to accept the directorate of the School for the year 1882–1883. He at once accepted, and Harvard agreed to allow him a salary of three thousand dollars during the year of his absence. As acceptances of the invitations were received, new members from the cooperating colleges were added to the original Institute committee of six which had been appointed to “devise a plan for the creation” of the School “and to carry the plan into immediate execution shall it appear well to do so.” It was also decided that the President of the Archaeological Institute (Norton) and the Director of the School (Goodwin) should be ex officio members of the committee. The newly elected members were Henry Drisler of Columbia, Basil L. Gildersleeve of Johns Hopkins, Lewis R. Packard of Yale, and William M. Sloane of Princeton. These four, with Norton and Goodwin and the original six—Gurney, Harkness, Ludlow, De Peyster, Palfrey and White, Chairman—made up the first Managing Committee of twelve, nine teachers and three business men.
The first meeting of the Managing Committee was held in New York, April 6, 1882. No minutes of this meeting are preserved, but it is of record that White was continued as Chairman, Ludlow was made Secretary, and De Peyster, Treasurer. Favorable answers to the letter of December 20, 1881, were reported from nine colleges: Harvard, Yale, Amherst, Brown, Johns Hopkins, College of the City of New York, Columbia, Princeton and Wesleyan. Trinity had declined, five were yet to be heard from. Semi-annual meetings of the Managing Committee were appointed for the third Friday of November in New York and the third Friday of May in Boston.
Cooperation from the first nine colleges was not, in every case, easily secured. President Barnard of Columbia proved most unsympathetic. De Peyster was moved to write Norton, bitterly denouncing President Barnard’s lack of sympathy and breadth of vision. The New York Times (March 31, 1882) indulged in a sarcastic comment on President Barnard’s attitude:
We sincerely hope that the ardent but mistaken Hellenists who are trying to establish an American school of classical studies at Athens will take counsel of their good sense before it is too late and abandon the project. Greek is a good thing, no doubt, whether taken plain from the grammar or in history, archaeology, or literature. But, as President Barnard has very sensibly pointed out, it is wholly unnecessary to go clear to Athens to get it.
“It certainly seems to me,” says this experienced educator, “that if only classical knowledge is to be acquired, students can be instructed fully as well in Greek history, Greek mythology, and Greek literature in this country as in Athens.” We are glad to have this utterance of a cool-headed and conservative college President to temper and check the unthinking enthusiasm of the younger Fellows, like Mr. F. J. de Peyster, Prof. Goodwin, Dr. Potter, and Prof. White, before our colleges are fully committed to the foolish undertaking.
The intentions of these young gentlemen cannot be questioned, of course. They were doubtless inspired by a sincere zeal for the cause of sounder classical education. But their scheme of an American school for the study of the language and literature of Greece on the very spot where that language and literature reached their highest development is manifestly absurd. Why should our young men go to Athens to study Greek? Is not American Greek good enough for Americans? If the time has come when an American boy can no longer sit on a wooden bench in New Haven, Cambridge, or Amherst, and put the oration on the crown into English, or analyze the metres of a chorus of Sophocles with the same profound unintelligibility and painstaking misunderstanding that have characterized the class-room work of our colleges for the past century, then Greek is no longer a fit study for the youth of this Republic. Will the advocates and intending patrons of this classical school give us their views on the teaching of Greek? What it there, and what can there be, in it but the learning and application of the inflexible rules of the grammar, the memorizing of paradigms, of conjugation systems, and of the laws of versification? If a boy can infallibly distinguish an augment from a reduplication, can decline substantives without blundering over the duals, and can answer the frequent and crucial question, “Why mê not ou?” say three times out of five, is that not Greek? That, at least, is Greek as it has been taught in this country by generations of gifted instructors, and it would be evidently wholly foolish to reject the system these venerable men found good, under which so many of our public men in the State and Nation have acquired that wide and accurate acquaintance with the Greek authors, whose wit and wisdom is perpetually on their lips in apt citation or ready reference.
The detestable spirit of innovation is no doubt at the bottom of this project. There are, unfortunately, even in the ranks of our public educators, not a few discontented men who are never willing to accept anything as settled. We suppose Mr. de Peyster, Prof. Goodwin, and the other agitators who are moving in this matter have become disturbed as to their minds by too much pondering upon the way they do these things in Europe. France and Germany have classical schools in Athens where their professors of Greek are trained.
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It is not to the Orient that we must go for our Greek, but to the free and boundless West. Go to Chicago, not to Athens, for your Professors of Greek, gentlemen. In such matters sit at the feet of men of ripe experience like President Bartlett, of Dartmouth. He knows a good Grecian when he sees him as surely as President Barnard knows a hawk from a handsaw, and when he wants anything in the Greek line he orders it from Illinois.
The organization of the Managing Committee with White as Chairman, April 6, 1882, and the appointment of Goodwin as Director of the School brought to fulfillment Norton’s dream. What followed for the next five years (1882–1887) was the hard, dreary work of preventing the dream from dissolving.
A circular signed by the committee of twelve was at once issued, soliciting students. It stated that the School would open October 2, 1882, that Goodwin would be in charge of the research that each student was expected to conduct, that there would be no regular classes, graduate students would be admitted from the cooperating colleges if their qualifications were approved by the Managing Committee, students must pursue their studies for at least eight months in Greece and for four months in addition in order to secure the School certificate, which was to be signed by all the members of the Managing Committee and the president of the Archaeological Institute, theses submitted by the students might be published in the “Bulletin of the School.” [In 1886 this regulation was relaxed, the signatures of only the director, the president of the Archaeological Institute of America and the chairman and secretary of the School Managing Committee were affixed.] It was further hoped that the School would “cooperate with the Archaeological Institute of America, as far as it may be able, in conducting the exploration and excavation of classic sites.” The Institute was the “mother fair” that was to assist her “fairer daughter” in exploring sites of Hellas. Time would bring the daughter to maturity and a full assumption of her responsibilities for this work.
During the years while White was Chairman (till May, 1887), Goodwin, Norton, Harkness and Sloane, in addition to the Secretary and the Treasurer, Ludlow and De Peyster, were faithful attendants at the semi-annual meetings of the Managing Committee. In fact, after his return from Athens, Goodwin was present at every meeting while White was Chairman, and out of twenty-six meetings till 1896, when the records of the Committee fail, he had missed but five meetings. Of the other twelve members of the original Managing Committee, Gurney—as has been said—soon withdrew, Packard died in 1882, Gildersleeve was able to attend only one meeting, Palfrey came only five times, and Drisler but six. The seven men on whose interest and labor the success of the School depended were White, Norton, Goodwin, Harkness, Sloane, De Peyster and Ludlow.
Membership on the Managing Committee has always been a prized distinction. At an early meeting (May, 1883) the Managing Committee expressed the opinion that “it is not advisable to establish a precedent under which all institutions which may hereafter extend their support to the School can claim to be represented on the committee.”
Among those who were later elected to membership, and whose service was notable during Seymour’s chairmanship (1887–1901), were Van Benschoten (1882–1902), of Wesleyan University; Ware (1885–1915), Merriam (1885–1895) and J. R. Wheeler (1896–1918), of Columbia; Fernald (1886–1902), of Williams; and Baird (1886–1896), of New York University. Of the original committee, Goodwin, Norton and Harkness attended with very great regularity. Drisler and White (who was giving a great deal of time to the Archaeological Institute) were usually there. De Peyster and Ludlow were faithful attendants till the former gave up the treasurership in 1895, and the latter died in 894. During his term as chairman—fourteen years—Seymour missed only one meeting.
It has been noted that White and Norton had elected to open the School at once, depending on contributions from cooperating colleges instead of waiting till a permanent endowment could be secured. It was decided to begin as soon as ten colleges could be found willing to contribute two hundred and fifty dollars each for ten years. As a matter of fact, the School had no other income for the first six years. In 1888–1889, $554.53 was received as interest from endowment, and $3,650 from cooperating colleges. It was not till 1907–1908 that the interest from endowment exceeded the colleges’ contributions ($4,583.72 as against $4,340), and the support received from the colleges has always been an important part of the School’s income. In 1929–1930 it reached ten thousand dollars, but that year the income from endowment was $79,445.14. In 1938–1939, the last year of Mr. Capps’s chairmanship, these amounts were respectively $8,237.60 and $53,732.98.
Nine colleges, including reluctant President Barnard’s Columbia, almost immediately agreed to cooperate in the support of the School. To these Cornell was added. Of those ten “founding colleges,” as they might be called, all except the College of the City of New York continued to support the School through all its first sixty years. The City College ceased its contributions in 1886 and did not rejoin till 1920.
In 1882 the University of California and the University of Virginia also accepted White’s invitation, but only two payments were made in each case, and they both withdrew in 1884. Twelve colleges thus contributed to the expenses of the first year. In 1883 the University of Michigan began its contribution, continued throughout the School’s history. In 1884 the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth were added. Dartmouth’s contributions were at first somewhat irregular, and the payment was a cause of anxiety to the Committee. These additions compensated for the loss of California and Virginia, making a total of thirteen for the second and third years. The University of Pennsylvania failed to contribute for 1885–1886, reducing the number for the fourth year to twelve. But this was more than offset by the addition in 1886 of New York University, Trinity College, Wellesley and Williams, and the return of the University of Pennsylvania. Thus, at the close of White’s chairmanship, there were seventeen cooperating colleges. [Only fifteen paid for 1886–1887, but Pennsylvania was regarded as a cooperating institution without further payment, because of the contribution of $1,378.09 which had been received from the performance of the Acharnians by its students, and New York University (University of the City of New York) was given a similar status because of one thousand dollars it had contributed.]
Since then there have never been fewer than that number.
In 1931 there were fifty-two cooperating colleges; in 1942, forty-four. In all, fifty-nine different institutions have cooperated in the support of the School. Thirteen of the colleges have established funds of five thousand dollars or more, deposited either with the treasurer of the School or with the treasurer of the college concerned, the incomes of which guarantee the perpetual participation of that institution in the support of the School.*
The names of institutions that were invited to participate in the establishment of the School during the first few years throw an interesting side light on the status of classical studies. In November, 1885, invitations were sent to Kenyon College, Tufts, Lafayette, Boston University, Rochester and Vermont. None of these accepted that invitation, but Vermont joined in 1891 and has been a member ever since. The University of Rochester was a contributing institution from 1928 till 1940. In May, 1889, Clark University was invited to cooperate, and in May, 1891, Rutgers and Leland Stanford. None of these answered favorably at that time, but since 1910 Stanford has been a contributing institution. Adelbert College of Western Reserve University sent its first contribution in 1889. After the University of California discontinued its contributions in 1884, Adelbert College, Cornell, the University of Michigan, and (from 1887 to 1890) the University of Missouri, were the only supporting colleges not located on the Atlantic seaboard until the University of Chicago was added in 1893. Nor had it apparently seemed worth while to invite other inland colleges, except Rochester, Union and Kenyon.
One of the problems that the Managing Committee faced in the early years was that which has tormented school executives through all the history of American education—“how to increase the enrollment!”
The first year there were seven students registered, but when the Managing Committee met in May, 1883, to face the second year, there were in prospect but three applications. As a matter of fact, there were that year (1883–1884) but two students. In November, 1883, the Committee faced the “possibility of there being no students at some future time.” A circular letter was sent out to the presidents, faculty and Greek departments of the cooperating colleges, explaining the advantages afforded by the School, offering free tuition and urging the establishment of traveling fellowships to facilitate attendance.
A year later (November, 1884) the advisability of advertising the School in a number of leading newspapers was discussed. Professor Sloane had inserted the following description of the School’s work in the Princeton catalogue:
This College, in connection with others, assisted in establishing, and contributes to the support of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. This school affords facilities for archaeological and classical investigation and study in Greece, and graduates of this College are entitled to all its advantages free of tuition. Professor Sloane represents Princeton in its Managing Committee.
Secretary Ludlow was instructed to request “such colleges of the United States as he may deem advisable” to extend to the School the courtesy of a similar notice.
The next year five hundred copies of the first bulletin of the Committee were sent out to a selected list of influential people, urging that an effort might be made “to find pupils for the School. . . . in view of the favorable effect upon the public mind which must be produced by a numerous attendance.” In May, 1886, provision was made to extend the privileges of the School to “special students”—such Americans traveling in Greece or resident there as might, in the judgment of the director, be qualified to benefit by the association. These measures seem to have been efficacious, for the attendance, after falling from seven the first year to two the second and one the third, rose to five for the fourth and seven for the fifth and sixth years.
The question of admitting women to the School never caused serious difficulty. In 1884 Miss Julia Latimer applied for membership. She was referred to Article VIII of the regulations. This informed her, in effect, that admittance was based on academic standing, not on sex. The first woman to enroll as a regular student was Miss Annie S. Peck, A.B., University of Michigan, 1878, Professor of Latin at Purdue University. She became a student in the School in 1885–1886 under the directorate of Frederic De Forest Allen and returned to teach Latin at Smith College. Later she urged the Managing Committee to appoint a “lady director.” When she renewed this suggestion in November, 1888, she was told that “any question of male and female assistant must be decided on consultation with the permanent director” (Waldstein). It was not till ten years later (1898–1899) that the first woman, Miss Angie C. Chapin, of Wellesley, was sent to serve on the staff of the School.
The question of inviting Wellesley to become a cooperating institution was the cause of considerable debate, which resulted in a unanimous vote favoring that action. Wellesley’s President, Alice E. Freeman (Mrs. George H. Palmer), was the first woman to become a member of the Managing Committee (1886–1887). She was succeeded by Miss Angie C. Chapin, who served till 1924.
The publication of results of research conducted by students of the School was also much discussed at the early meetings of the Managing Committee.
At the second meeting of the Committee (the earliest of which the minutes are preserved), in November, 1882, a committee on publications was appointed, Professors Packard and Gildersleeve and Mr. Ludlow, to arrange for the publication of the Bulletin of the School. A year later (November, 1883) it was decided to publish two bulletins each year and a volume of papers, the latter to contain the results of the research conducted the preceding year by the director and students. At the same time the publication of the report of Goodwin on the first year’s work was authorized. This Was Bulletin I.
The following spring (May, 1884) this rather ambitious program was modified to provide for the publication of an annual bulletin in November, containing the report of the director of the preceding year and other pertinent matter.
In 1885 the second Bulletin, a memoir of the second director, Lewis R. Packard, of Yale, was published. That same year Goodwin was appointed the first permanent chairman of the Committee on Publications. As a matter of fact, the idea of issuing bulletins at regular intervals was gradually abandoned. Their place has been taken by the regular annual reports published continuously from the inception of the School in 1882 to the present time. Only five Bulletins were issued, the two already mentioned, the brief report on the excavations at the Argive Heraeum by Waldstein (Bulletin III, 1892), White’s careful report on his year as Annual Professor, 1893–1894 (Bulletin IV, 1895) and Seymour’s History of the First Twenty Years of the School (Bulletin V, 1902).
The publication of the Papers of the School caused even more discussion in the Managing Committee than the question of the Bulletin. At first the problem seemed easy of solution. The results of the work each year of the director and the students were to appear in a volume of Papers the succeeding year. The first year all went well. The theses written by six of the seven students were in hand. The contribution of John M. Crow was extracted from him some years later and appeared in Volume IV (1885–1886). The papers contributed by Sterrett, Wheeler, Bevier and Fowler were selected for publication, and to these was added the epoch-making article on the Battle of Salamis by Professor Goodwin. This made Volume I of the Papers.
But with the Papers for the second year the troubles of the Publications Committee began. Professor Packard’s fatal illness had inevitably caused confusion in the work of the School. It was decided to combine the papers of the year of his directorate (1883–1884) with those of the next year. But the following year there was but one student. Much to the disgust of the Managing Committee it was reported (May, 1886) that “letters from” the two members of the School for 1883–1884 “gave no evidence that papers from them would be ready within any definite time and also that nothing was to be expected from” the member for 1884–1885. These gloomy expectations were fully justified. No contributions from those students were ever printed by the School.
Moreover, the spirit of J. R. Sitlington Sterrett was beginning to trouble the waters. Sterrett had already received his doctor’s degree from Munich when he enrolled as a student of the School under Goodwin. The following year, during the illness of Packard, he had been made Secretary of the School and had rendered real service by taking much responsibility for the conduct of the program. He was one of the first American scholars to appreciate the importance of inscriptional evidence and one of the most indefatigable in searching for new material. In the summer of 1884 he made a journey through Asia Minor in quest of inscriptions. The results of this were contained in a Preliminary Report published by the School with financial assistance from the Archaeological Institute. In 1885 Sterrett again visited Asia Minor as a member of an expedition to Babylonia sponsored by Miss Catharine L. Wolfe. An account of this Wolfe Expedition, written by Sterrett, was published in 1888 as Volume III of the School Papers (1884–1885). This was financed in large part by Miss Wolfe and the Institute.
The publication of the remarkable epigraphic material in these volumes brought great credit to the School, and Sterrett’s work has won increasing recognition. But these results were not achieved without travail. As early as November, 1884, the Managing Committee had voted to publish Sterrett’s contributions if he would consent to moderate the language in which he had denounced certain French scholars. In the final vote authorizing publication, in November, 1886, it was recognized that competent revision of the manuscript was necessary but that “the need for such revision was unfortunately not clear to Dr. Sterrett . . . . It was clear that Dr. Sterrett must be protected from himself.” Goodwin, as Chairman of the Publications Committee, was consequently placed in a “somewhat unpleasant position,” a position from which he was rescued by his own ability and tact and not by the Managing Committee, who, like the companions of Job, merely voted that it was “the duty of the Committee [on Publications] to make an effort to secure the publication of Dr. Sterrett’s report in a creditable form . . . . and as soon as possible.”
The volumes of Papers, II and III, were actually published in 1888. That same year appeared Volume IV “(1885–1886). This volume contained the results of the School’s fourth year. More than half of it was devoted to an article on “Greek Versification in Inscriptions” by the Annual Director, Frederic De Forest Allen, a work of profound scholarship well illustrating Allen’s meticulous accuracy and his fine sense of proportional values. It contained also the belated paper on the Pnyx by Crow.
Two other volumes of Papers were published by the School, Volume V (1886–1890) in 1892, and Volume VI (1890–1897) in 1897. The articles in these volumes by their variety and their scholarly character testify to the increasingly valuable contribution which the School was making to classical scholarship in these years.
In 1897 an arrangement was made with the American Journal of Archaeology by which the School was to elect an associate editor of the Journal to represent the Managing Committee, and the Journal was to give preferential consideration to the articles contributed by members of the School.
At the fourth semi-annual meeting of the Managing Committee, November, 1883, the question of raising an endowment for the School was taken up. A committee was appointed to make a preliminary survey of the situation, with authority to appoint trustees for the endowment when it should be raised. This committee, of which General Palfrey was chairman, reported the following May that the time for raising an endowment was not propitious. A similar report was rendered the following November (1884).
It was not till 1886 that an active campaign for endowment was inaugurated. At that time New York University subscribed a thousand dollars. The students of the University of Pennsylvania gave in Philadelphia and in New York a performance of the Acharnians, the proceeds, $1,378.09, going to the endowment fund. [A very interesting account of this is contained in the Autobiography of Senator George W. Pepper (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1944), p. 39. Senator Pepper took the part of Dicaeopolis.] Three musical societies of Harvard—the Glee Club, the Pierian Sodality and the Banjo Club—gave a joint concert presenting “with excellent effect” a program of “great variety.” The proceeds, $718, were donated to the permanent endowment of the School. [This is White’s statement made in the Fifth and Sixth Annual Reports, p. 22. In the records of the Managing Committee, p. 55, for May 20, 1887, it is stated that this turn, “about $700,” was included in the amount, $24,500, subscribed toward the twenty-five thousand dollars needed for the School Building. In view of the care with which the overdraft of the Building Fund on the Permanent Endowment was repaid, it teems likely that the $718 eventually found its way into the endowment.] Three hundred dollars was added during the winter of 1886–1887 from lectures given by Dr. Waldstein and Professors Gildersleeve, Goodwin and Merriam. To this Mr. Henry G. Marquand added five thousand dollars, making a total endowment of over eight thousand dollars at the time of White’s retirement from the chairmanship of the Managing Committee in May, 1887. In May, 1890, the endowment fund had reached $46,276.
During the first year (1882–1883) the School’s