A History of the American School of Classical Studies, 1882-1942
Chapter IV: The Chairmanship of Edward Capps of Princeton University, 1918–1939
Edward Capps was graduated from Illinois College in 1887. He received his doctor’s degree from Yale in 1891. He had already been appointed Tutor in Latin at Yale in 1890 and two years later had the distinction of being invited to join that remarkable group of teachers whom President Harper gathered about him to build the newly founded University of Chicago. There he taught and wrote, edited the twenty-nine volumes of the University’s Decennial Publications, founded and edited Classical Philology. He lectured at Harvard on the Greek theater and was Trumbull Lecturer on Poetry at Johns Hopkins. He was called to Princeton as Professor of Greek in 1907. He had studied at the School when White was Annual Professor, and his work on the Greek theater and on Menander had given him a recognized place among the authorities on the Greek theater and the Attic drama.
Capps’s chairmanship began with an interregnum. When Wheeler died, February 9, 1918, the Executive Committee, consisting of Horatio M. Reynolds, Allen Curtis, James C. Egbert, Paul V. C. Baur, George E. Howe, Edward Capps and Alice Walton, at once asked Professor Edward D. Perry, of Columbia, to serve as Acting Chairman. At a meeting in New York, March 28, 1918, he appointed a committee to report at the annual meeting in May on the advisability of electing a permanent chairman at once or, in view of the conditions created by the war, postponing such a choice and carrying forward the affairs of the School under the direction of an acting chairman. This committee was also instructed to present a nomination in accordance with its recommendation. The committee appointed to make this important decision consisted of Perry, Curtis and Howe of the Executive Committee, and from the Managing Committee at large Allinson, Bassett, Fowler and Smyth.
Reporting unanimously May 11, 1918, the committee recommended the election of a permanent chairman and nominated Edward Capps. His election was immediate and unanimous.
Professor Capps’s engagements prevented him from assuming the duties of the chairman at once, and it was agreed that he should assume office on September 1, 1918. Perry was continued as Acting Chairman till that time.
During the summer, however, it was decided that a Red Cross Commission should be sent to Greece. Capps was asked to act as director with the rank of lieutenant colonel, and Henry B. Dewing was attached to his immediate staff with the rank of captain. Capps at once offered to resign the chairmanship of the Managing Committee, but the Executive Committee urged him to retain it, offering to continue the arrangement by which Perry served as Acting Chairman till Capps should be free to return to America. Fortunately for the School, Capps consented to these conditions. He actually assumed the chairmanship on December 1, 1919.
At the same meeting at which the Executive Committee had successfully urged Capps to retain the chairmanship, they had also voted to ask the Trustees to put the School property and the School personnel at the disposal of the American Red Cross. This the Trustees consented to do.
Accordingly Capps, on behalf of the Red Cross Commission, and Hill, on behalf of the School, arranged that the School building should be rented by the Red Cross for their headquarters. The staff of the Commission were accommodated in the student rooms of the upper floor and two rooms on the ground floor. This meant that the building was occupied continuously during the two years while the School was inactive (1918–1920) and that the School received a moderate compensation for the use of the building and the rent of the rooms. The building was (so the acting chairman thought) “subjected to unusual wear and tear” during its use by the Commission, but the Red Cross made a small grant to compensate for this. In addition, the members of Capps’s staff added many items of furniture to the rooms they occupied—articles which, in departing, they left behind them for the comfort of future students. Though the cost of repairs to the building at the close of its occupation” amounted to twenty-seven hundred dollars, by the arrangement the School had not only benefited from a financial point of view but had rendered a patriotic service which was not forgotten.
The Commission’s staff became much interested in the work of the School and established a Red Cross Excavation Fund. Among the first subscribers were Lieutenant Colonel Capps, Major Alfred F. James, of Milwaukee, Major Horace S. Oakley, of Chicago (later a Trustee of the School), Major A. Winsor Weld, of Boston (later a Trustee and Treasurer of the School) and Major Carl E. Black, of Jacksonville, Illinois. This fund amounted eventually to $3,034.57.
The Red Cross and the School also cooperated in securing a wholesome water supply for Old Corinth. The School provided the labor, and the Red Cross supervised the sanitation.
It has been noted that much difficulty arose in the excavations of Peirene from the fact that this fountain still supplied water to the village of Old Corinth. During the winter of 1919 heavy rains had brought down from the hills so much mud that the drains had been clogged, and the stagnant water accumulating in the excavations had become a breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes. The Red Cross joined the Greek Archaeological Society, the village and the American School in remedying this situation. The drains were cleaned, and pipes were laid, carrying Peirene’s waters to the village and restoring normal conditions. The Greek Archaeological Society contributed eight thousand drachmae, and the village gave the labor of two hundred men for a day and the entire cash balance in the village treasury, two hundred drachmae. These sanitary rearrangements were supervised by Hill.
During these two years there were no students in residence. The staff of the School consisted of the director, B. H. Hill; the secretary, Carl W. Blegen; the architect of the School, William B. Dinsmoor; and during the second year (1919–1920) Henry B. Dewing, who had been promoted to the rank of major in the Red Cross and who was appointed to the annual professorship in May, 1919. They all rendered conspicuous service to the Red Cross.
Hill took charge of the Home Service Bureau, where his chief duty was to see that allotment checks and insurance certificates for the twenty-five thousand-odd Greek soldiers in the American Army reached their proper destinations in Greece. Later he assisted efficiently in the anti-typhus campaign in eastern Macedonia and Bulgaria. Blegen organized relief work among villages near Mount Pangaeon and at Drama. He also inspected for the Red Cross concentration camps in Bulgaria and reported on conditions in western Macedonia and northern Epirus.
Dinsmoor was given a lieutenant’s commission in the United States Army in August, 1918, and assigned to duty as a military aide to the American Legation in Athens. In April and May, 1919, he found time to add further to his knowledge of the Propylaea area by excavations in the southwest wing. This excavation gave important evidence regarding the foundation of the early Propylon.
The Greek Government expressed its appreciation of the service of the School staff to the Greek nation by conferring on them distinguished decorations. Capps received the Gold Cross of a Commander of the Order of the Redeemer (the highest order of Greek chivalry) and the Order of Military Merit of the Second Class with Silver Palm; Hill and Blegen received the Gold Cross of an Officer of the Order of the Redeemer. Dewing also received this decoration and in addition the Order of Military Merit, and Dinsmoor was given the Order of Military Merit of the Fourth Class.
This is not the place to speak of Capps’s administration as Commissioner of the Red Cross to Greece. It was characterized by his usual clarity of vision and all-pervasive energy. As an Associate Director of Personnel in charge of the New York Branch of the National Headquarters I had reason to know this personally. The first official communication I received from him was a cable directing me to impound a certain chiropractor in the service of the Red Cross who was returning from Greece and relieve him of a Greek decoration which he had fraudulently obtained.
Capps presented his first report to the Trustees for the year ending August 31, 1920. It is a remarkable document. Clearly a new, vitalizing force was at work in the Managing Committee.
The report not only surveys the condition of the School at the close of the war and lays down the program for the resumption of work but makes a number of concise suggestions for the future and announces a plan of action. It is worth while to summarize this report and to see, in anticipation, how many of these proposed objectives were realized.
Capps at the beginning of this report paid a well deserved tribute to the wisdom of the founders of the School, who had been so careful to separate the functions of the Trustees from the functions of the Managing Committee:
The above recital of our relations with the Cooperating Institutions shows a most gratifying spirit on the part of their representatives on the Committee, and bears testimony to the wisdom of the policy which was adopted when the School was founded and has been tenaciously adhered to throughout the forty years of its existence. I refer to the plan of management which makes the elected representatives of the colleges and universities which contribute to its support the governing body of the School. The Trustees of the School are the custodians of its property and funds; but the income derived from the several sources is placed without restriction at the disposition of the Managing Committee, which makes the budget and directs the internal affairs of the School, electing as its administrative agents a Chairman and an Executive Committee. Thus clothed with complete authority, the Managing Committee of professors has discharged its duties skillfully and conscientiously year after year, without friction with either the Trustees on the one hand or the Cooperating Institutions on the other; and such a thing as a deficit, which is the chronic ailment of institutions conducted upon the usual plan, is unknown and virtually impossible. Students of academic administration are invited to study the record of the Athenian School, which has passed beyond the period of experiment. A wise distribution of function has resulted, on the one hand, in keeping the School a part of the educational system of the institutions which support it, and, on the other hand, in concentrating in the hands of educational experts the full responsibility for the educational administration; there has been efficiency combined with democracy; and the clashing of authority, so commonly witnessed where the position of the faculty is ill defined or too narrowly limited to teaching and discipline, has been conspicuously absent. It is a record of which the Managing Committee, and doubtless the Trustees also, are justly proud.
During the war some of the cooperating colleges found it impossible to continue their support. The revenue from this source had fallen from $4,695.42 in 1917–1918 to $3,662.07 in 1918–1919, a loss of about twenty-two per cent, a severe loss, since at this time the income from the colleges, even at this reduced figure, was one-third of the total School income (income from securities in 1918–1919, $7,816.08). Capps noted that there were twenty-five institutions cooperating in the School’s support and that the number had not been increased in twenty years. This static list he vigorously described as an anachronism. He suggested the addition of Bowdoin, Hamilton, Goucher, Oberlin, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, Tulane and the State Universities of Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Colorado. During his chairmanship all these were added except Vanderbilt (which joined in 1940), Tulane and Colorado. And in lieu of these he succeeded in adding the Bureau of University Travel, the Catholic University of America, the College of the City of New York, the University of Cincinnati, Crozer Theological Seminary, Drake University (for one year), Duke, George Washington University, Haverford, Hunter, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Rochester, Radcliffe, Swarthmore, Syracuse, Trinity, Washington University, Whitman College, the State Universities of Ohio and Texas, and the University of Toronto. The income from this source rose immediately. In 1921–1922 it was $8,733.29; for 1929–1930 it was ten thousand dollars.
To secure more publicity for the School Capps advocated that each cooperating institution mention in its catalogue the facilities of the School, which were open gratis to its graduates.
He further planned to secure extensive publicity for the School by articles of a popular nature in Art and Archaeology. Mitchell Carroll, who was then Editor-in-chief and represented the George Washington University on the Managing Committee, promised space, an offer which was later renewed by his successor, Arthur Stanley Riggs.
On the matter of deferred publication Capps spoke in no uncertain tone:
Referring to the problem of the School’s publications in general, the Chairman shares with the other members of the Committee the feeling that, while we have every reason to be proud of the work of research accomplished by our representatives in Athens, the time has come when the publication of discoveries which we have announced to be of the first importance must be pushed to early completion. Certainly the time has now come when no other task or preoccupation should be allowed to interfere with the prompt appearance, one after the other, of the books on the Erechtheum, the Propylaea, and Corinth. Corinth should, in fact, come first. It is therefore urgently recommended that every effort be made, by all the officers and committees concerned, to bring the three volumes mentioned to immediate completion. And the work already done at Corinth should be adequately reported in the preliminary publication before further excavations are undertaken, or funds solicited for them.
The cost of the final completion of work at Corinth and its publication was spoken of as a matter of fifty thousand dollars, a considerable underestimate, as the fact proved. Capps set himself to raise this fund as well as a permanent fund for excavation and research.
It has been noted that the final arrangements for the purchase of a lot for the women’s hostel had been announced by Capps while he was still in Athens. He now arranged for the building of the hostel itself by securing the appointment of W. Stuart Thompson as architect. His preliminary plans were formed, and a committee was appointed to secure the $150,000 necessary for the erection of the building.
The Auxiliary Fund, which he had founded, now had reached a principal sum of about ten thousand dollars, and interest from it could be used for current expenses. But this assistance was wholly inadequate to carry the increased expenses of the School.
Capps pointed out that the budget of $20,050 adopted for 1920–1921 was something like six thousand dollars in excess of the current income of the School. Though part of this was for nonrecurrent items and though part of it could be met from reserves accumulated, still it took a considerable amount of confidence in the future to pass and advocate this budget. Capps did not hesitate. He went a good deal further ; he closed his report with the bold statement that an additional endowment of at least two hundred thousand dollars was necessary and that at least half of this must be procured during the coming year.
The aim of Capps’s chairmanship was, then, (1) to increase the number of cooperating institutions; (2) to make the work of the School better and more widely known; (3) to publish the books on the Erechtheum, Corinth and the Propylaea; (4) to systematize and vigorously prosecute the further excavation of Corinth but preferably not till after these three publications had appeared; (5) to secure an endowment for excavation and research; (6) to erect a hostel for women; and (7) to more than double the endowment, and that without too much delay. This was no trifling program. No voice like this had been heard in the Managing Committee since the trenchant report of White in 1894 (Bulletin IV).
When Capps laid down the chairmanship twenty years later (1939), of these seven objectives all had been magnificently attained except the publication of the Propylaea.
In June, 1920, Capps was appointed, by President Woodrow Wilson, Minister of the United States to Greece and Montenegro. He promptly offered to resign his chairmanship, but the Executive Committee refused to entertain this suggestion and as before appointed Perry Acting Chairman. Capps sailed for Greece in August. While he was Minister in Athens he scrupulously refrained from active participation in the affairs of the School, though he could not withdraw his interest from what was the most absorbing activity of his rich and varied life.
There may be a difference of opinion regarding the effect on the nation of the defeat of the Democratic Party in the election of 1920. There can be no question that it was a blessing to the School, for it terminated Capps’s ministerial mission in March and sent him back to the United States in June, 1921, to devote himself again to the chairmanship. Perry presided at the meeting of the Managing Committee in May, 1921. The report for the year was written by Capps.
For the first time since 1914–1915 there was a student body at the School. (There had been one Fellow, part-time, in 1915–1916.) There were nine regular students, all Fellows. There were three Fellows of the Institute (two appointed before the war), one Fellow of the School and a Fellow in Architecture, two Charles Eliot Norton Fellows from Harvard, a Procter Fellow from Princeton and a Locke Fellow in Greek from Hamilton. Miss Priscilla Capps and Edward Capps, Jr., were associate members.
The stipend of the Fellows of the School and of the Institute was this year for the first time advanced to one thousand dollars. Among these Fellows at the School were several who were to maintain a long connection with it. Leicester B. Holland, Fellow in Architecture, was reappointed for the following year with the title Architect of the School and again for 1922–1923 as Associate Professor of Architecture. James P. Harland had been at the School the second semester of 1913–1914. He was now a Fellow of the Institute. He returned to the School twice later—1926–1927 and the second semester of 1939. Benjamin D. Meritt, Locke Fellow of Hamilton College, was the following year Fellow of the Institute, Assistant Director of the School (1926–1928), Annual Professor (1932–1933), Visiting Professor (1935–1936, first semester), member of the Managing Committee from 1926 on and Chairman of the Publications Committee 1939–.
Miss Alice L. Walker (Mrs. Georgios Kosmopoulos), who had been a student in the School 1909–1914, returned to Greece this year to work on the prehistoric remains about Corinth and the prehistoric pottery found there. This investigation was destined to be long continued. In 1939 she took the manuscript of her first volume to Munich, where she arranged to have it published by Bruckmann. When the book was printed, in 1940, it could not be delivered and probably is still in Munich. Volumes II and III are still “in preparation.”
Under the chairmanship of Professor Samuel E. Bassett the Committee on Fellowships recommended a change in the character of the examinations, which was approved by the Managing Committee. Under the new ruling the candidate was required to take examinations of a general character in Modern Greek, Greek Archaeology, Architecture, Sculpture, Vases, Epigraphy, Pausanias and the Topography of Athens and a more searching examination in one of the fields to be chosen by the candidate himself. The requirement had previously been Modern Greek and any three other topics.
The first open meeting in years was held at the School in March. Hill spoke on the excavations at Corinth, and Blegen on Korakou.
The progress of the School was signalized this year by the first automobile trouble. A Fiat camion and a Ford car had been obtained as a legacy, or spoils of war, from the Red Cross. Hill reported that the School trips had been unusually numerous and extensive, “owing to the speed of the camion.” These trips were diversified by all sorts of accidents to tires and running gear, causing delay and expense. The final debacle came when an elaborate interchange of locomotive activity with the students of the Roman School was attempted in the spring of 1920. The Athenian School were to proceed by train to Olympia and Messenia, thence by mule to Sparta. There they were to meet the Romans, who were to have gone by camion through Argolis. Here an exchange of transport was to be made, each school returning to Athens by the route the other had taken from Athens. The strategy was excellent, but the tactics faulty. The camion refused to leave Athens till repairs to vital organs had been effected. Meanwhile, the Romans proceeded to Nauplia by train, where the camion overtook them. At Sparta the exchange was made, but when the camion had transported the Athenians as far as Monemvasia it gave up the ghost. A disgusted chairman reported, “At last accounts the camion has been out of commission since April, 1920, on account of injuries undergone in the Peloponnesus trip.”
The Fortieth Annual Report (1920–1921) had contained this statement:
In accordance with the desire of the Committee, in which Dr. Hill fully shares, that no considerable new excavation, or even a continuation of the excavation of Old Corinth, should be undertaken until the officers of the School should have had time to catch up with arrears in the matter of publication, no programme for future excavations by the School itself has been proposed or considered. It is the Committee’s hope and expectation that for the next few years the Director and Assistant Director will devote the time which, in other conditions, they would be giving each year to the exploration of sites, in the search for new material, to the preparation for publication of the accumulations of earlier years.
Circumstances seemed to make a relaxation of this “substance of doctrine” advisable.
In October, 1920, Blegen, accompanied by Hill and the students of the School, stopped about halfway between Corinth and Mycenae for a casual investigation of a mound, Zygouries, which had seemed to Blegen to offer attractive possibilities. Here a very cursory examination revealed many traces of prehistoric culture, a bit of wall and many sherds. Lester M. Prindle, Charles Eliot Norton Fellow, found a marble idol that belonged to a type hitherto unknown on the mainland. Seager generously offered five hundred dollars for a trial excavation. [Fortieth Report, p. 17, states five hundred pounds, but the whole excavation cost less than one thousand dollars (Forty-first Report, p. 20).] Hill donated one hundred dollars given him by Mrs. Edward Robinson “for excavation.” At a further inspection the next March, Dr. Robinson offered to add five hundred dollars more to complete the excavation. Work was begun in April. Wace, of the British School, offered his assistance, and Holland, Harland and J. Donald Young, Procter Fellow of Princeton, joined the force.
This excavation was continued the next year (1922). A significant contribution toward defraying the expense was made by Mr. Carl B. Spitzer, of Toledo.
This excavation, made at the relatively small cost of about one thousand dollars, was one of the most successful undertaken by the School. It was shown that there had been a settlement here from 2400 to 1200 B.C. The earlier settlement was the more important. The plans of small houses separated by narrow, crooked streets were disclosed. Much pottery from this stratum was recovered. The Middle Helladic settlement (2000–1600 B.C.) was the least important. A “potter’s shop” belonging to the latest Helladic period was discovered in which about a thousand vases were found. In addition to this, Blegen during the second campaign was able to locate the burial place of this village. Here an Early Helladic cemetery was found. With the exception of a single grave discovered at Corinth these were the earliest examples of Early Helladic burial on the mainland. The objects found in these tombs were exceedingly valuable as establishing a connection with the Cyclades. There were also found graves of the Middle and Late Helladic periods.
When the objects found here were removed to Corinth, it was necessary to rent a special building to house them. Blegen at once made a preliminary publication of these excavations in Art and Archaeology. The final publication, a handsome volume with twenty illustrations in color, was issued by the School in 1928. (Plate XII)
An interesting arrangement was made this year with the Fogg Museum of Art, of Harvard University, for joint excavations. The Museum agreed to furnish not less than ten thousand dollars a year for five years. The School agreed to secure the necessary concessions and to attend to the formalities incident to the conduct of an excavation. Each party was to furnish one representative or more to oversee the work. The publication was to be sponsored by both institutions, the expense to be met by the Museum. This arrangement was obviously advantageous to the School, and it was hoped that such supervision as would be necessary could be furnished without interfering with the program of publication on which the Committee was determined.
This was the first of several joint excavations in Greece under the auspices of the School. D. M. Robinson’s dig at Olynthus and Lehman’s at Samothrace were later examples of such an arrangement. Miss Hetty Goldman was chosen by the Fogg Museum as their representative. She had been a student in the School for three years (1910–1913). She had excavated successfully at Halae. During the summer of 1921 Miss Goldman and Hill traveled extensively in Greece, the Islands and Asia Minor, investigating the possibility of digging at various sites. Colophon, about twenty-five miles south of Smyrna, was finally selected. Application was made to the Government at Smyrna in February, 1922. Hill spent ten days in March completing arrangements, and early in April the expedition set out.
Dr. Goldman was in charge with Miss Lulu Eldridge. The School was represented by Blegen and Holland, of the staff, and three students, Meritt, Franklin P. Johnson, Fellow of the School, and Kenneth Scott.
Most of the work was done on the acropolis. This rises terrace above terrace, as at Pergamon. On the main terrace the ground plans of several large houses were uncovered. Stairways and drains were cleared. These Greek houses proved to be of an early date, the earliest yet found except at Priene. A bathing establishment was also found, and the sanctuary of the Great Mother was located. A brief account of this excavation, written by Fowler, was published in Art and Archaeology, and a more complete statement appeared in Hesperia in 1944. Work was discontinued when the territory about Smyrna reverted from Greek to Turkish authority but was resumed for a brief time in the fall of 1925. The site proved unrewarding, and nothing further was done. Two publications were made, however, a preliminary article on the inscriptions by Meritt in the American Journal of Philology (1935) and an exhaustive discussion of the Colophonian house in Hesperia.
At the meeting in 1921 much dissatisfaction with the delay of the Erechtheum publication was manifest. On motion of Dr. Edward Robinson it was highly resolved that “the publication of the results of the investigation of the Erechtheum by the American School be not further delayed, and that no results of investigation later than the spring of 1921 be included.” Capps had personally seen each of the contributors. He was able to report that Dr. Paton would finish his chapter in 1922. Stevens’ work was complete, Fowler was making his final revisions, and Caskey was well along with the building inscriptions on which he had worked in Athens in 1921. It was hoped the printer would receive the material in 1922.
No such hope was expressed regarding Hill’s Bulletin on Corinth. It seemed likely that Paton, when released from the Erechtheum, might have to be assigned to this task, too.
The Propylaea book, though “in a somewhat more advanced state than a year ago,” was still further from completion than its author could wish.
This year the Auxiliary Fund, under the chairmanship of T. Leslie Shear, reached its high-water mark. The amount received was $10,751.32. Shear himself made a generous gift of five thousand dollars. It was hoped at the time that something like this amount might be realized annually. That has not been possible. For a considerable number of years the gifts amounted to about five thousand dollars annually but during the last few years of Capps’s administration they fell to about three thousand dollars. The very success which he attained in securing large gifts discouraged those who were able to give but a modest amount, and these constituted most of the personnel who made up the Auxiliary Fund Association.
One project begun some time earlier was completed this year. A piano had long been needed for the social rooms of the School. Mrs. A. C. McGiffert, of New York, had taken the matter in hand and with the assistance of Mrs. C. B. Gulick, of Cambridge, and others she raised funds to purchase a Mason and Hamlin Grand Piano, which is still appreciated by the students of the School.
Two other funds were begun in 1920–1921. One fund was in memory of Major Cyril G. Hopkins, of the University of Illinois, a member of the Red Cross Commission. He came to Greece at the request of Mr. Venizelos to advise the Greek Government as a soil expert. The value of his pamphlet on “How Greece Can Produce More Food” has proved the wisdom of Venizelos’ suggestion. He died at Gibraltar of malaria contracted in Greece. His friends at the suggestion of Dewing established this fund. The initial amount was $624.
The other fund was established in memory of John Huybers, an American press correspondent who died at Phaleron in 1919. His sympathetic understanding of the Greek people led his Greek friends to desire that his name might have a permanent place in an institution devoted, as he was, to American-Hellenic unity. This fund was $545. In neither case was there expectation that the fund would be very largely increased. The former amounts (1944) to $703.12, and the latter to $714.53. They remain part of the permanent School endowment and will continue to serve the friendly purpose for which they were established.
But the really memorable event of 1920–1921 was the beginning of Capps’s first campaign for a large endowment.
Capps realized that the time for such a campaign was unpropitious (it always seems to be) but unlike other chairmen he went ahead anyway. His motto seems to have been, “Today, Providence permitting; tomorrow, whether or no.” On June 1, 1920, he applied to the Carnegie Corporation and the General Education Board, asking each for an endowment fund of one hundred thousand dollars on condition that the Trustees and Managing Committee of the School raise one hundred thousand dollars. If both granted the request the School’s endowment would be increased by three hundred thousand dollars; if only one did so, by two hundred thousand dollars, the minimum absolutely required by the needs of the School. A similar request was also made to the Rockefeller Foundation.
The General Education Board was inhibited by its charter from assisting educational institutions in foreign countries, and the Rockefeller Foundation had made other commitments, but the President of the Carnegie Corporation, J. R. Angell, brought the matter to the attention of his Board of Trustees in the fall after Capps had gone as Minister to Greece. Apparently no action was taken at that meeting. Before their spring meeting Dr. Edward Robinson, who had been in Greece during the winter and had thus had an opportunity to study the work of the School personally, wrote a letter describing the achievements of the School and its needs to Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, a member of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Corporation. Dr. Pritchett had earlier been deeply interested in the School, and probably this letter to him and his influence in the Board were determining factors in the favorable decision at which they then arrived.
After several conferences between Capps and Allen Curtis, Treasurer of the School Trustees, and President Angell, on July 18, 1921, the Carnegie Corporation made this conditional offer to the Trustees and the Managing Committee of the School. The Carnegie Corporation would grant the School’s request for one hundred thousand dollars for endowment if the School would raise for endowment $150,000 before January 1, 1925. Further, to meet the immediate needs of the School, the Carnegie Corporation offered to pay five thousand dollars a year for five years conditioned on the School’s raising seventy-five thousand dollars by July 1, 1923. This was the first but by no means the last of Capps’s triumphs as an administrative financier.
The immediate payment of the first five thousand dollars enabled the Managing Committee to revise its budget for 1921–1922. The budget for 1920–1921 had been $20,050. It had been reduced to $13,250 for 1921–1922. It was now possible to increase this to eighteen thousand dollars, including an item of one thousand dollars for the purchase of annuities in favor of the director and the assistant director. Blegen had been given the title of assistant director at the annual meeting in 1920 in recognition of his distinguished services to the School as secretary from 1913 to 1920. He was the first to hold this title.
An organization committee was appointed, consisting of Capps, chairman, Perry and Allen Curtis. A Committee on Endowment was created by them and fully organized by November 1, 1921. The Committee on Organization were made the officers of this larger committee. Work was prosecuted with all the energy and enthusiasm characteristic of Capps.
As a preliminary to the endowment campaign the committee felt that more publicity of a dignified character for the School was necessary. Mitchell Carroll, a member of the Managing Committee, generously gave a whole issue of Art and Archaeology, of which he was editor, to an account of the School. This appeared in October, 1922. Harold North Fowler devoted his entire summer to writing and editing the articles, which were profusely and beautifully illustrated. They included a brief history, of the School and its earlier excavations, by Fowler; a chapter on the excavation of Corinth, written by Hill and edited by Fowler; a chapter on prehistoric sites by Blegen. “The Researches on the Athenian Acropolis” was contributed largely by Dinsmoor. “The Publications of the School” was written by George H. Chase, who also contributed, with the assistance of Leicester B. Holland, the article on Colophon. An interesting contribution on the opportunities for study in the Byzantine field at the School was contributed by Dr. Robert P. Blake.
When the annual meeting of the Managing Committee was held the following May, seventy thousand dollars had been raised. By August 1, 1922, the total was $89,506.83, well over half the amount sought in less than a year.
And now a very welcome testimony to the importance of the School as an American institution of the highest standing came from Mr. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in whose behalf Mr. Raymond B. Fosdick wrote in June, 1922, to Capps, stating that after careful investigation Mr. Rockefeller had decided to give the School, preferably for permanent endowment, one hundred thousand dollars, provided the School was successful in its effort to raise the $150,000. Meanwhile, he very generously offered to pay the Trustees of the School the interest on his gift at five per cent. His offer was limited to two years, thereby setting forward the limit for completing the campaign for the $150,000 from January 1, 1925, to June 19, 1924.
More than a year before that date arrived, Capps was able to announce the completion of the task. On May 20, 1923, there had been subscribed $147,000. Dr. Joseph Clark Hop-pin had pledged two thousand dollars if the fund was completed before July 1, and Dr. Edward Robinson had asked to be allowed to give the last thousand dollars. He had already given the first thousand. Before July 1 additional gifts raised the total to $160,000. The final total was $165,473.99.
All of this amount, as well as the hundred thousand dollars from the Carnegie Corporation and the hundred thousand dollars from Mr. Rockefeller, was for permanent endowment. Of the remainder, $83,555 was given for unspecified purposes. Other endowment funds which were created at the time and which helped to make up the grand total were the American Red Cross Commissions Fund, the Hopkins and Huybers Funds, and funds to capitalize the participation of Adelbert College of Western Reserve University, Harvard University, the University of California and New York University.
Three funds were also started in honor of the first three chairmen of the Managing Committee, John Williams White, Thomas Day Seymour and James Rignall Wheeler. At the time it was hoped that these might be built up to twenty thousand dollars each and that then each would support a fellow in residence at Athens with a stipend of one thousand dollars. The fellowship in Seymour’s memory was to be awarded for the study of the Greek Language, Literature and History. These fellowship funds have later been raised to thirty thousand dollars each, and a fourth in honor of Edward Capps was added by the Trustees after his retirement from the chairmanship. Seymour, White, Wheeler and Capps Fellows were all appointed in 1940. The details of these gifts with a complete list of all the donors are given in Capps’s meticulous report for the year 1922–1923.
When Capps was made chairman in 1918 the endowment accumulated in thirty-six years was less than $150,000. His active work as chairman had begun in 1920. In less than four years he had increased the endowment to more than five hundred thousand dollars.
During the year 1921–1922 there were four regular students at the School. Meritt was spending his second year in Athens, as Institute Fellow. He devoted this year largely to work on Thucydides, spending much time in Elis, Acarnania, Aetolia and the Chalcidic Peninsula. He prepared a paper on the Apodotia campaign of the Athenian general Demosthenes and by careful study of the tribute lists was able to point out unfairness in Thucydides’ treatment of Cleon.
Miss Alice Walker continued her study of Corinthian pottery but spent considerable time in investigating prehistoric sites in the Peloponnesus, especially in Arcadia.
This was the year in which Blegen was completing his dig at Zygouries, and, in fact, the attention of the School was being drawn more continuously to the prehistoric sites. Blegen suggested a complete survey of the Peloponnesus with this in view. Another promising site near Thisbe in Boeotia was also considered. The Managing Committee was so impressed with the work of Blegen that they voted an appropriation of fifty dollars at the meeting in May, 1922, for a small investigation on Mount Hymettus, where the year before Prindle had found a few geometric sherds in a hollow near the summit. A preliminary excavation the next year disclosed a deposit of considerable depth containing many sherds of the geometric period and some of the classical age. A few of the geometric fragments were scratched with rude lettering. In 1924 this excavation was completed. A very large number of shattered vases was found, mostly heaped together, apparently votive offerings from a shrine. Some two or three hundred were nearly intact. These were removed to the National Museum for repair and study. The expense of this excavation was met by T. Leslie Shear.
In March and June, 1939, Rodney Young, of the Agora staff, made a supplementary excavation here. Foundations were discovered indicating a sanctuary, and a three-letter inscription that suggested Heracles as the deity worshipped. An altar was found with another sanctuary nearby, identified as the sanctuary of Zeus, and a stele which, it was suggested, formed the basis of the statue of Zeus of Hymettus, mentioned by Pausanias. The altar would then probably be the altar of Zeus of the Showers, also said by Pausanias to be on Mount Hymettus. Many of the pieces of pottery found were inscribed, but none seems to be earlier than the seventh century B.C.
The Managing Committee took steps at its meeting in 1922 to secure closer relations with the staff of the School and better to acquaint the members of the Committee with what was going on in Athens.
These regulations provided that the director should each year before May 1 provide the chairman of the Managing Committee with a list and description of the courses to be offered during the year, a list of the proposed School trips and of the excavations to be made. The annual professor was to outline his work for the coming year during the preceding December. Monthly reports were to be made by the director and the associate director. The annual professor and other members of the staff were to submit, through the director, reports on January 1 and at the close of the year. The director was further asked to file with the chairman before May 1 each year a detailed report of the year’s work “which shall indicate clearly all changes from the proposed plan of work, with the reasons therefor.” The Executive Committee was empowered to approve the plan of the year’s work or to suggest changes. Explicitly no excavation was to be undertaken by any member of the School staff “unless provided for in the Budget, or approved in advance by the Executive Committee.” The idea of publishing the courses in advance recalls White’s suggestion, but the general tone of these resolutions, unanimously recommended by the Executive Committee, suggests growing tension between the Managing Committee and the staff. For a time, however, they seem to have served a very useful purpose.
Dinsmoor’s book on the Propylaea was now pronounced to be as nearly complete as it could be made till the author could revisit Athens to verify details. Hill’s Bulletin on Corinth showed no progress, but the article on the excavations which he was preparing for Art and Archaeology was felt to be progressing in the right direction. The hopes for the publication of the Erechtheum had not been fully realized, but such progress had been made that it seemed probable that part of the material would reach the printer in the spring of 1923.
Capps