Eugene Vanderpool
Born August 3, 1906, New Jersey Died August 1, 1989, Athens
X2: 7 rows up from the entrance to the Protestant Cemetery, near the end of the row.
American archaeologist Eugene Vanderpool was associated with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) for almost 60 years, first as an excavator in the Agora (1931-61), then as Deputy Director of the dig from 1947 to 1967 . He became a professor of Archaeology at the School from 1949 to 1971 and professor emeritus thereafter until his death in 1989. His research covered a wide range of subjects including ancient literature, Greek vase painting, Greek and Roman architecture, ancient sculpture, ostraca and epigraphy. By all accounts, he was engaging and witty, ("an inscription is easy to read if you know what it says.” ) and very knowledgeable about Attica in particular, an area he knew well. They say he discovered many out of the way archaeological sites during long walks with his students,
Eugene and his wife Joan chose Greece as their home from the time of their marriage until their deaths. His stay was interrupted only once, by his internment in a German prison camp during the Nazi occupation of Greece. Along with details of his life, his close association with the Athenian Agora offers us an opportunity to see how the American School came to gain this plum archaeological prize and what was sacrificed to uncover classical Athens. His internment gives us a chance to look at the situation the ASCSA found itself in during the Second World War vis-à-vis the German Archaeological Institute, and how it weathered the storm.
His Life
Eugene was born on August 3, 1906 in Morristown New Jersey. He was the son of Wynant Davis Vanderpool, a graduate of Harvard Law, and Cornelia Grinnell Willis. Gene was the eldest of three children (1). He attended St Paul’s School in Concord New Hampshire, an exclusive boys’ school founded in 1856 focusing on a “rigorous academic and character building education”.
From there he followed in his father’s footsteps and entered Princeton University where he studied classics. (2) In his freshman year, Eugene participated in freshman track events and cross country running, all good training for a trip he made as a student to Albania and Greece in 1927. Apparently he first crossed into Greece from Albania on foot, a sign of things to come. Hiking became a lifelong passion.
Eugene received his BA degree from Princeton in 1929 and continued his studies at theAmerican School of Classical Studies at Athens. In 1932 he began work at the Athenian Agora excavations which the ASCSA had acquired in 1931 after years of negotiations with the Greek government.
The Agora and How the ASCSA Aquired It
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The Agora from above as it appears today. The two diagrams below match this perspective, with the Temple of Hephaestus visible on the west on the Agoraios Kolonos Hill, and the Stoa of Attalos on the northeast/
In 500 B.C. the Agora was a large open space with plenty of room in the centre for a circular orchestra with wooden bleachers when needed (3) and space for markets or for crowds viewing the Panathenaic procession as it passed through the Agora from the Dipylon Gate to the Acropolis on the Panathenaic Way
By Roman times it was cluttered, full of Hellenistic and Roman add-ons. This is the Agora described by Pausanias.
Modern Greeks in 1900 would have seen nothing at all of the ancient Agora aside from the temple of Hephaestus on top of the Agoraios Kolonos Hill and the remains of what the locals dubbed ‘monstrous’ marble giants discovered by the Greek Archaeological Society in 1835, one of which was placed on its pedestal in 1855. (More giants and tritons followed). By 1896, those found had been fenced in for display just in time for the Olympic games. No one was sure of their origin.(4)
Except for the temple and the ‘monsters’, the ancient Greek Agora was buried in silt, the debris of Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman structures, and all of that was covered over by an even newer layer, Vrysaki, a bustling neighbourhood in the heart of post Independence Athens.
Vrysaki in front of the Hephaestion in 1900
As early as 1924, the cash strapped Greek government began dickering with Archaeological schools with a view to offering the all important Agora excavations to any school that could come up with the money to expropriate the properties covering it and to excavate. It was a huge undertaking and an important one. It was, after all, the site where democracy was born. The Greek Archaeological Society and Greek Archaeological Service were naturally loathe to give it up entirely.(5) It was a long negotiation described in detail by Sylvie Durant in her excellent book Vrysaki:
A grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and other donors sealed the deal. As a result, 448 buildings and 5,000 souls in the heart of Athens would disappear in a slow process that began in the spring of 1931.
First Excavations in 1931 (from ASCSA files)
It was a daunting task. The diagram below shows all of the ancient structures found, superimposed on each other.
The task was to peel back, record each layer, and somehow end up baring the Agora as it was at the height of Athenian democracy.
Eugene in the Agora
After Corinth, the Agora was the biggest project taken on by the ASCSA. Eugene’s life as a field excavator happened here and, along with others, he spent many productive seasons on site. Over time, he would discover the tholos, the Mycenaean tomb with the ivory pyxides, and the ballot box (under the stoa of Attalos). He believed he had found Socrates Prison, a building just south of the Agora, a finding that not everyone agrees with, but his arguments are worth a look. (See https://www.the-athenian.com/site/1976/04/01/the-prison-of-socrates/)
1935 Joan and Marriage
In I931 Eugene met photographer Joan Jeffery at the agora site where she was photographing the excavations. Joan was 21 in 1931 and had already accumulated a lot of life experiences for someone so young. Her family were wealthy; she had attended Bryn Mawr briefly, married briefly, and divorced before coming to Greece in early 1930.
Her portrait by Polish painter Tamara de Lempicka was commissioned by her first husband and completed in 1929. (6)
The 1934 Agora staff photo above shows Joan sitting in the middle and "EV" standing at the right. Her pose is strikingly similar to the painting.
According to the Princeton Alumni Weekly, he and Joan married at the agora excavations. They would have four children, a son and three daughters.(7)
The Albanian Invasion, the Nazi Occupation, and Detention
In 1939 as the European continent lurched into war, the ASCSA was forced to think ahead. The ASCSA was not a governmental agency. It had always distanced itself financially and legally from the United States government, relying on private donors and an ever growing consortium of American universities (well over 100 by the mid forties) to fund its explorations and publications. As a result, the ASCSA owned buildings in Athens were vulnerable if any invasion occurred.
The United States did not then have an Embassy in Greece, but it did have an American Legation with a minister who fulfilled an ambassador’s role. In order to protect it, Minister Lincoln Mac Veagh sought permission to relocate the American Legation to the grounds of the ASCSA . At the School, efforts were already underway to store records and artifacts, should the need arise. The letters U.S.A. were writ large on the roofs of three ASCSA buildings and the colonnade of the Gennadius library was earmarked as a bomb shelter. When the Italians invaded Greece on October 28, 1940, the wisdom of all that preplanning was vindicated. The ASCSA members who decided to stay in Greece, did what they could to help the Greek side. Joan Vanderpool ran a crèche in Marousi to help feed the children of soldiers called to the Italian front while Eugene would spend a good deal of his time on his bicycle and on foot during the 1940-41 year, trying to scavenge food for everyone. “This is the way I came to know the city” Eugene would later say. Eugene and about eleven other foreign staff had opted to stay in Greece. This was just prior to the German invasion.
When Germany did invade Greece in April of 1941, the American Legation moved into the ASCSA buildings in order to place them under the aegis of the United States. When America itself entered the war on December 7, 1941, the Swiss Legation took over the American interests and occupied the ASCSA buildings to save them from damage and looting. Even then, as most Americans left for home, Eugene and Joan decided to stay in Athens, as did archaeologist and former ASCSA director Bert Hill who had a home near the school and whose primary goal was to protect the Corinth museum and the ASCSA interests there.
The Nazi occupiers arrested Eugene and sent him to Laufen Castle in Germany, a camp set up to accommodate American citizens who had not left Europe when the United States entered the war. While incarcerated, Eugene gave lessons on classical history to fellow prisoners with books provided by the International Red Cross and an edition of Thucydides he just happened to have had in his pocket when arrested. Bert Hill was also detained in Corinth but was allowed to return to his house in Athens which he had to share with four German officers. Joan and her children were briefly detained in Piraeus and then set free to fend for themselves as best they could.
Whereas the ASCSA in Athens was virtually at a standstill during the occupation, the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) was having a triumphal moment.
The German Archaeological Institute: a Funny Kind of Philhellenism
Ever since King Othon’s reign, Germany had a special relationship with Greece. Its archaeologists were popular and respected. Like all archaeological schools, it too worked closely with the Greek government and the Greek Archaeological Society. In the early years of the ASCSA, German archaeologists would lecture to the American students on their work on the Acropolis and in Olympia. There may have been some rivalry, but there was cooperation too. But, unlike the ASCSA, the German Archaeological Institute was a German government entity under the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs and, as the thirties progressed, it became enmeshed in a network of Nazi government entities. Much to the consternation the ASCSA members, the School had been well and truly Nazified even before the Germans invaded.
The 1936 Olympic Games had taken place in Munich and had been a propaganda coup for Hitler. This made the new excavations at Olympia even more important to the Nazi propaganda machine.
On April 10, 1937, Nazi Minister Bernhard Rust turns over a shovelful of dirt to mark further excavations in ancient Olympia.
During the Nazi occupation, German archaeologists at the Institute acted as if the Greeks living under their thumbs and their ancient counterparts were in no way connected. (8) They were happy to incorporate ancient Greece into their myth of cultural superiority while caring not at all for the suffering they saw around them. Historian Alexandra Kankeleit has called this disconnect on the part of German archaeologists (many of whom had lived lived in Greece for years and had married Greek citizens) “Academic Autism”. It was a breathtaking attempt at a cultural heist. (9)
German soldiers visiting the Hephaestion during the occupation.
During the occupation, the German army would re-enact the Battle of Thermopylae more than once. It was a fully costumed extravaganza meant to identify the Reich with Spartans, a group Hitler particularly admired.
The cast…
Release
Eugene was released in 1944 in a prisoner swap and went back to Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Studies, where he conducted research until 1946 when he returned to Greece as part of the United Nations Relief and Rehibilitation Administration. In 1947, he became a deputy head of the agora excavations in 1947, a position he would hold until 1967.
In the 1948-49 school year, he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to continue his research. (9)
In 1949 Eugene was appointed professor at the American School of Classical Studies and taught there as a full professor until 1971. It is perhaps his role as teacher at the ASCSA that has been his greatest legacy.
Between 1953 and 1965, following in the footsteps of Elizabeth Blegen, he published a regular News Letter from Greece in the American Journal of Archaeology, in which he summarised the results of recent research and excavations by the American School in Athens and Attica. Some of these articles can be accessed on line today.
In 1956 Joan and Eugene renovated an abandoned 17th-century monastery in Pikermi into a home for their family, dividing their time between there and Athens in later year.
Their house was featured on the cover of the prestigious magazine Architektonike (pp. 16-21 in 1958)
In 1969 Eugene delivered the Semple Lectures at the University of Cincinnati, His subject? Ostracism at Athens (published in 1970)
1978 saw him giving the Jackson Lectures at Harvard University on Marathon.
Kudos: Eugene was a recipient of the Greek Order of the Phoeni , and a member of the Archaeological Society of Athens. He received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the American Archaeological Institute in 1975.
His Death
After his retirement he continued his connection with the School as Professor Emeritus until his death from Parkinson’s disease in 1989 (10). Joan died in 2003.
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Eugene and Joan in the 1980s
Afterword
It was as a teacher that Eugene Vanderpool made his lasting mark on the ASCSA. No archaeologist works alone, so the task of educating new members of the School was important.
The Joan and Eugene Vanderpool Fellowship , established in his honour by his heirs and others is intended for second-year students recommended by the Director of the American School and supports research on any aspect of the Athenian Agora, including history, archaeology, literature, epigraphy, architecture, art history, and biodiversity.
The ASCSA’s private funding and University connections (around the two hundred mark today) have so far assured it remains a vibrant entity and independent of any given government’s policy decisions. The truth is that, until recently, there has never been a great divide between the United State’s aims and the aims of their cultural institutions abroad. But Trump’s recent efforts to control university curricula and funding should have warning lights blinking today. In 2025, the Fulbright Scholarships of which Eugene was a recipient, have come under fire from DOGE and Trump. The program has been altered, causing all but one of the Board to resign See: https://edition.cnn.com/2025/06/12/politics/fulbright-scholarship-board-resign-trump and stay tuned…
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The Grave
The Map
Footnotes
(1)Eugene was born in 1906, Mary in 1909, and Wynant Jr was born in 1915.
(2) His roommate at Princeton was Rodney Young, yet another future ASCSA luminary.
(3) This was an early orchestra that excavators believe was situated under the Roman Odeion of Agrippa before the creation of the Theatre of Dionysos on the southern slope of the Acropolis.
(4) These larger than life figures with fish or serpent tails were quite an attraction in 1896. It was first thought they were part of the Twelve Gods statues described by Pausanias. It turned out they adorned the much later Roman Odeion of Agrippa.
(5) Originally the area under consideration for excavation stretched from the Hephaesteion all the way to the Tower of the Winds. The American School finally settled for the area from the Hephaesteion to the Stoa of Attalos, the area you see today. The Greeks did excavate Hadrian’s library and the Roman Agora but never did get into wholesale expropriations. Many of the small streets that once stretched across the entire agora now end abruptly at the eastern Agora fence.
(6) In 2004 it was sold by Christies for over four million dollars. Naturally, it had gone into storage when she married Eugene.
(7) Lisa Vanderpool, married Miltiadis Evert, a prominent Greek government minister.
(8) Jacob Fallmerayer (1790-1861) had promoted the idea that modern Greeks had no ethnic or cultural connection with ancient Greeks.
(9) Founded by United States Senatir J. William Fulbright in 1946, This program has been one of the most prestigious scholarships in the United States - allowing students from the U.S to study abroad and foreign students to study in the United States. The aim was to promote cultural understanding.
(1o) Joan and His children Joan Gayley, Ann Lewenduski, Eugene jr and Lisa survived him.
Sources
The ASCSA’s own files offer the best way into understanding the complex Agora excavations.
https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/uploads/media/AR_62_1942-43_reduced.pdf Is the report in the 1942-3 year mentioning Vanderpools intertment and the situation in aAthens.
https://www.kankeleit.de/occupation.php A paper on German Archaeological institute during the German occupation.
https://www.tovima.com/stories/germanys-diplomatic-digs-archaeology-and-politics-at-dai-athens/
https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/index.php/archives/a-history-of-the-ascsa-1939-1980 the school’s own account of war years, and the very best account for research on Vanderpool.
https://sclawren.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/18912/2018/10/m-vanderpool.pdf His article on Marathon
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/AJS505954?journalCode=aja His obituary written by John Mckesson Camp II
http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2009/06/vanderpool-house-at-pikermi.html by Kostis Kourelis
http://kourelis.blogspot.com/2007/12/art-deco-beauty-incarnate-at-clemson.html
https://www.ascsa.edu.gr/uploads/media/hesperia/146791.pdf A detailed PDF on the giants of the Odeion of Agrippa
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