History of the American School 1939-1980- Chapter XII

A History of the American School of Classical Studies, 1939-1980

Chapter XII: Epilogue

Between October 2, 1882 when the first seven students of the American School of Classical Studies gathered in Athens under William Watson Goodwin’s Directorship through October 1980 when 17 Regular Members, 34 Student Associates, and 25 Senior Associate Members were registered in the 27th Directorship, that of Henry Immerwahr, some 2300 students and senior scholars had worked at the School in the regular and the summer sessions. They had gone to Athens from colleges and universities the length and breadth of the United States and Canada (and some few from European countries), most but not all of them from the Cooperating Institutions which had risen from the original nine of 1882 to 125 in 1980. They returned to teach in no less than 250 colleges and universities and many secondary schools, both public and private, or to work in museums, some also to pursue architectural, legal, theological, business or other careers. One might try to count the hundreds of books and articles written at the School or inspired by study there as some measure of its achievement, but it is the careers and the lives of those men and women that best suggest the influence their years spent in Athens have had on Greek studies in the United States. As they have brought home the learning and the enthusiasm, the conviction and the dedication acquired at the School which they have shared with countless others, the hope of the founders that the interests of classical scholarship in America might be advanced by the School has been fulfilled probably far beyond the most optimistic dreams of a century ago. It is fitting that this record be dedicated to the memory and the honor of these members of the School. They are bound closely together. Since 1928 there has hung over the fireplace in the seminar room of the School a marble plaque inscribed with these words of Gregory of Nazianzos written in a tribute to his fellow student in Athens, Basil the Great: ουδέν γαρ ούτως ουδενί λυπηρόν ως τοις εκείσε συννόμοις Αθηνών και αλλήλων τέμνεσθαι.