Welcome 2

WELCOMING REMARKS

In 1924, Professor “William T. Semple, head of the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati, secured the cooperation of a group of Cincinnati businessmen to ‘adopt’ a site in Greece and to finance its excavation. The site selected was Nemea, and one thousand dollars was contributed. The work was entrusted to [Carl] Blegen,”1 the thirty-seven year old Assistant Director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. What was Semple’s motivation? In part, I imagine, he wanted to remind the world that America consists of more than two coasts, with a big river somewhere in between. He, like others of us who are devoted to the Queen City of the West, no doubt wanted to extoll its virtues to those who had never travelled west of the Alleghenies. And, in this regard, Blegen, a Midwesterner, a native Minnesotan of Scandinavian ancestry, was a particularly appropriate choice for the Cincinnati field director. The excavations of Nemea marked the beginning of a 75-year association between the University of Cincinnati and the American School of Classical Studies at Athens — two University of Cincinnati professors have directed the School; countless students have won fellowships to study archaeology, Classics, and ancient history there and have had the privilege of conducting archaeological fieldwork under its auspices. I am thus extremely happy to have the opportunity this morning to add my compliments and congratulations to those already offered to Jim Muhly by other colleagues. Jim, who will shortly assume the directorship of the ASCSA, has long been a friend and supporter of the University of Cincinnati, not least as a member of its research team at Ayia Irini on Keos. Carl Blegen and Marion Rawson, the honorees of today’s sessions, are names hardly separable in the minds of long-time Cincinnatians. Although the public voice of their collaboration was more often his than hers, there can be no doubt about the significance of her contribution to their partnership. Blegen must have meant to imply this when, upon accepting the first gold medal for distinguished archaeological achievement awarded by the Archaeological Institute of America, he emphasized the importance of friends: “Field archaeology is an uncertain and fickle mistress. In addition to work, application, and perseverance, many other factors too are essential for success. Among the most important may be counted good luck and good comrades. Most of my failures resulted from the lack of one or both of these two elements: and most of my enterprises that somehow turned out reasonably well owed it to my able colleagues.”2 Today at the University of Cincinnati this partnership between Blegen and Rawson is commemorated in the professorial titles currently borne by myself and Gisela Walberg, who will have more to tell you about Marion Rawson in her introductory remarks tomorrow. Blegen’s career cannot easily be detached from the history of the Department of Classics at the University of Cincinnati. The momentous decision to sponsor excavations at Nemea soon set forces in motion that resulted in his acceptance of a professorship here in 1927. In this action, as in so many, Semple showed characteristic wisdom. Semple was: “imaginative, and ahead of his time in [the] ‘interdisciplinary’ program [he promoted at Cincinnati]; he and his wife, Louise Taft, furnished much financial backing [for Blegen’s research], and the enterprise f lourished.”3

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L.E. LORD, A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens 1882-1942 (1947) 172-73. AJA 70 (1966) 182. J.L. CASKEY, “Carl William Blegen (1887-1971),” Year Book of the American Philosophical Society 1972 (1972) 121-25.

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Jack L. DAVIS

Under Blegen’s and Semple’s guidance, Cincinnati established itself as the center of Aegean prehistory in North America. Blegen’s excavations at Korakou had already structured the prehistory of mainland Greece in its modern form, by the time he arrived at our university, but still greater accomplishments were to follow. In 1937, publication of fifty chamber tombs from the Argive Heraeum — his first collaborative effort with Marion Rawson — set standards of archaeological publication rarely met, even today.4 It was Blegen, too, who foresaw the need for regional archaeological projects of the sort now so common in Greece: his encouragement lay behind the inception of the University of Minnesota Messenia Expedition. Excavations at Troy expanded the geographical focus of departmental research. But doubtless the crowning achievement of Blegen’s career and that which affected our understanding of the ancient Mediterranean most significantly was his discovery and excavation of the Palace of Nestor in Messenia. The foundations laid by Blegen and Semple have remained solid. After retirement, Blegen passed the baton to his student, Jack Caskey, who in turn promoted an expansion of instruction in Aegean prehistory by enticing Mervyn Popham and Gerald Cadogan to Cincinnati. Today, more than a quarter century after Blegen’s death, it is a great good fortune that there is a community of six Aegean prehistorians associated with our department, each of whom teaches or conducts research on our behalf: Gisela Walberg and I, Eric Cline, Tucker Blackburn, Ada Kalogirou, and Elizabeth Schofield (as director of our excavations at Ayia Irini on Keos). We are proud that we can support teaching and research in Aegean prehistory, and grateful to past benefactors who make it possible for us to do so, long after their deaths. In particular the prescience of William Semple and Louise Taft Semple in establishing the Semple Fund through a bequest in her will, allows the Classics to f lourish in Cincinnati, and for our department to maintain a strong commitment to Aegean prehistory at this public university — even at a time when support for the Humanities from state government and university administrators disgracefully dwindles. The Semple Classics Fund provides fellowships to students; aids in the publication of research by our faculty; supports what is doubtless the finest research library in Aegean prehistory in North America; subsidizes the costs of archaeological field research; and even, from time to time, assists with the expenses of sponsoring conferences like the one we are attending today. Indeed, I, like Diane Harris-Cline and Eric Cline, am especially appreciative of its contribution to the overall package of funding that has enabled our department to host “The Aegean and the Orient in the Second Millennium.” I am certain that Professor Semple would be especially pleased to see the many alumni of our department, Aegean prehistorians, who are present in this room today — an impressive return for his investment in 1924.5 On behalf of all of us I welcome you to Cincinnati. Jack L. DAVIS

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C.W. BLEGEN, Prosymna: the Helladic Settlement Preceding the Argive Heraeum (1937). These included Susan Heuck Allen of Brown University; Elizabeth C. Banks of the University of Kansas; Emmett L. Bennett of the University of Wisconsin; Tucker Blackburn of the University of Cincinnati; Zoanna Carrol of the University of Pennsylvania; Leslie P. Day of Wabash College; John C. Lavezzi of Bowling Green State University; Thea Smith of the University of Cincinnati; and John Younger of Duke University.