BERT HODGE HILL

Born March 7 1874, Vermont Died December 2 1958, Athens

The Protestant Cemetery, ten rows up from the entrance

Bert Hodge Hill was director of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) for twenty years during the early period of the development of the school which is today an archaeological and research powerhouse. His name will be forever linked to ancient Corinth where his own meticulous methodology led to the adoption of the rigorous documentation of excavations that has become the hallmark of American excavations in Greece. Bert chose to live in Greece until his death in 1958, distinguishing himself during two world wars as well as during the relief effort for refugees after the Asia Minor catastrophe in 1922. He was well liked and hard working. It was his reluctance (or inability) to finalise and publish his Corinth excavation findings that led to his dismissal as director of ASCSA in 1926. Aside from that failure, Bert Hodge Hill proved to be adept in every other endeavour during his long life. If his marriage to fellow archaeologist Ida Thallon was an unusual one, it proved to be happy and, if he never became a super star like his friend and fellow archaeologist, Carl Blegen, his life was nonetheless full of adventure. His story offers a fascinating glimpse into ASCSA’s early years and into the complex Corinth excavations where Bert found himself deeply mired in mud and local politics.

His Life

Bert Hodge Hill was born in Bristol Vermont on March 7, 1874. He received his AB degree from the University of Vermont and his MA from New York’s Columbia University in 1900. From 1901 to 1903, Bert became a Fellow at the American School of Classic Studies in Athens, an institution which had opened its doors for the first time only nine years before his arrival. His sojourn, first as a Columbia Drisler Fellow, then as a Fellow of the Archaeological Institute of America, would change his life in ways he could never have imagined.

Foreign Archaeological Schools in Athens – a Little Background…

When the ASCSA was founded n 1881, it had only two rivals, the French School founded in 1846 and the German School founded in 1872. Until such schools became established, most Greek archaeological sites had been magnets for thieves, visiting dilettantes, and amateur archaeologists /collectors like Heinrich Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans. The Greek Archaeological Service (founded in 1834) and the Greek Archaeological Society (created in 1837) made up of Greek archaeologists and interested citizens had done their best and had even sponsored some digs but the number of potential sites was vast and the government lacked the means to either excavate intensively or to stem the steady flow of stolen antiquities. Allowing foreign schools to operate offered a solution – especially since the citizens of the nations establishing such institutions considered themselves Greece’s cultural inheritors. Enthusiasm was high.

Today there are 19 archaeological schools or institutes in Athens(1), all under the aegis of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, all sometime collaborators but also rivals because all have been dependent on the ministry for assignments to ‘plum’ sites. The government’s choice of who excavates and where has often hinged on who could pay the most, so the funding of these schools was important, as was ensuring a constant flow of publications both to inform and attract donors. The Greek government has always restricted what finds could be taken abroad but there always seems to have been a way to ensure that donor institutions acquired an adequate number of antiquities to display. (2)

When Bert attended the American School, it was in a smallish neoclassical building in a very rural landscape:

The School in 1902 when 15 students attended

It had been the brainchild of Harvard’s Charles Eliot Norton(3) and founded in 1881 by a consortium of 9 American Universities who would then send their graduate students to Greece either as attendees or as Fellows with grants for research. The Greek government, under Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis ceded them land in today’s Kolonaki. At that time it was considered a dubious gift because it was deemed too far from the acropolis and the city centre.

Athenian public transport in 1882 did not pass by the school.

In 1882, the first group of students arrived; 1885 saw its first woman student; 1896 saw its first site excavation at Thorikos and at Corinth. Students who came to study or work would form friendships and professional networks which would last their entire lives. Most became professors at American universities or institutions so as time passed the ASCSA was also creating a network of experts and backers. (4) Little did Bert realize that one of the young students also attending the 1901-1902 year would become his wife.

He returned to America in 1903 to become the Assistant Curator of Classical Antiquities at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and a Lecturer at Wellesley College.

If the sudden death of Theodore Heermance, the director at the ASCSA had not occurred in 1905, Bert might have remained in Boston. But the death had left the school scrambling for a suitable replacement and Bert’s name was put forward by the chair of the schools’ managing committee. He had received a glowing recommendation from his alma mater, the University of Vermont, but it did mention his inability to hand in written work in a ‘timely manner’. In those early days, this was not deemed the flaw it would eventually become. Bert was well liked. ‘Agreeable’ is a word that would always be included any conversation about Bert. ‘Inventive’ was another.

Bert had to give up his connection at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts because, as director of ASCSA he had, like Caesar’s wife, to be above suspicion in the eyes of the Greek Director General of Antiquities with whom he would have to deal. No foreign museum with a significant collection of Greek antiquities was above suspicion when it came to how they had or would acquire their Greek artifacts.

The role of director included attending Greek social events, remaining in good standing with the Greek Director of Antiquities and, of course, supporting the students’ endeavours. In those typhoid and malarial prone years, attending to the sick and even arranging for a body to be shipped home was part of the director’s job. It even fell to Bert to personally arrange for screens to be placed on all of the windows in the school, not to mention overseeing the School’s expansion.

1922: still isolated but growing. The two buildings on the left belong to the American School. The British School, founded in 1886, became its neighbour on the right.

If he ever found his duties onerous, there was always the dig at Corinth to which the School had been given exclusive rights in 1896. It was then the jewel in the crown of the school’s excavations and Bert’s great love during his directorship.

Corinth

Ancient Corinth’s layout was a bit of a mystery in the 1890s. Pausanias had barely mentioned it partly because, for him, it was just another Roman city and his interest was ancient Greece. When he was there, Corinth was still being well watered by an 85 kilometre aqueduct from Mount Kyllini, a marvel of Roman engineering, but the venerable ancient Greek Peirene fountain was still doing its stuff and had been enhanced by an imposing facade in Hellenistic and later in Roman times. Pausanias mentions its ‘sweet waters’.

The Peirene Fountain after Excavation.

The fountain had started out as a grotto with a spring that tapped into an aquifer to the south. The spring was then enhanced by tunnels built deep behind the original cave, tunnels which allowed even more water from the aquifer to accumulate, flow into basins and then into a pool in front of the fountain.

When it was rediscovered in 1898 by the American School, the fountain was buried more than six metres underground and may never have been found at all if Mr Tsellios’ well, on the land above the site, had not been explored. It turned out to be fed, not by the water table itself, but by the ancient tunnels. The School wasted no time in digging down and had laid bare the façade by 1901. Like Pausanias, they were more interested in Greek structures than any overlying structures or finds. In their haste, the documentation of the layers carted away was not quite up to the standards that Bert himself would insist on when he became director of the site.

Here you can see the farm above and just how much dirt and rubble had to be removed.

Tsellios’ well was destroyed in the process and he was given a pump in recompense although, being a conservative villager, he was very suspicious of his new pump. His house was purchased by the School and become the main residence of the archaeologists.

The Peirene fountain find was big news at the time and helped the school to raise funds for more excavations. Its discovery was a starting point for exploring the ruins of Corinth, a palimpsest of eras that has still not been entirely excavated. (5)

Muddy Waters…

What is amazing is that the fountain system, although deeply buried, was still providing water to the town. This was discovered when tunnelers’ boots muddied the waters as they were exploring and the muddy water began to appear in the water used by the townspeople, including the outlet where village women still washed their clothes!(6)

The American School became responsible, not just for farther excavations, but also for ensuring the safety of the town’s water supply. Luckily, Bert was as fascinated as to how the fountain’s tunnels and catchment basins worked as much as he was with the artifacts being unearthed. Bert was a bit of a Renaissance man – everything interested him. Apparently he hoped to return the fountain to its pristine state and working order – quite a task.

Maybe Don’t Drink Deep…

Like the villagers, Bert suffered from both malaria and typhoid during his water explorations and many suspected the fountain’s water supply although this was not conclusively proven until microscopic analysis in 1932. The very uncovering of the fountain had led to more complications with water purity because its environs were now exposed to flooding after rains.

Carl Blegen and Bert Hodge Hill

Bert got some real help when a former Fellow of the School, Carl Blegen became School Secretary. The two became lifelong friends. Carl was made Assistant Director in 1920. Both remained in Greece all during the First World War, guarding the School which, of course, was shut down.

Carl and Bert in 1915

Bert volunteered for the American Red Cross. In the 1920s he also served as an officer on the Greek Refugee Settlement Commission after the Asia Minor catastrophe brought so many Greek refugees to the country.

Bert’s 1918 American Red Cross ID card

1924 and a Marriage

Bert’s marriage came about when he was 50 because Carl Blegen fell in love. A problem arose when Elizabeth Pierce, a fellow classicist and student at the school refused Carl because she felt she could not abandon her relationship with her erstwhile teacher and friend with whom she had already been living for some years. Ida Thallon, thirteen years older than Elizabeth knew Bert from her sojourn at the school in 1901 and they had met again when she visited with Elizabeth. She was a scholar and classicist in her own right.

What to do?

Carl, desperately in love, came up with a plan. He would marry Elizabeth and Bert would marry Ida. Then all four could live together, allowing the ladies their time together without ruffling society’s feathers. Bert and Ida seemed to have adopted the role of indulgent parents, sometimes referring to Carl and Elizabeth as ‘the children’. Bert was fifty to Ida’s 49 when they married in England in 1924. The day after their wedding, Carl wrote to Bert: It is certainly the finest possible solution of the whole problem, best in every way for everybody …. We are going to have a wonderful time together when our Quartet reassembles in Athens.

Ida Thallon Hill

And they did…

1926: Publish or Perish

The first real crisis in the shared lives of the ‘Pro Pars’ as they often referred to themselves (short for in a professional relationship) occurred in 1926 when Bert’s foot dragging on publishing his Corinth notebooks led to his humiliating (for him) dismissal. Bert never felt that he had discovered quite enough to publish. It fell to Edward Capps the chairman of the managing committee to tell Bert his days as director of the ASCSA were over. His procrastination had become inexcusable in the eyes of the man whose job it was to keep the school running smoothly, see to the regular publishing of reports, and to keep it well funded.(7)

This setback for Bert caused the indignant Quartet to distance themselves from the ASCSA, but not entirely. In fact Carl became the director for a year after Bert. They lived the rest of their lives near the American School at 9 Ploutarchou Street, a home Elizabeth purchased in 1931. While they were in residence it became an open house for archaeology students, Greek scholars, and American Embassy staff.

9 Ploutarchou Street is today the seat of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation which promotes Greek Culture and Arts within and outside of Greece. Upon their deaths, it was willed to the ASCSA.

Bert’s interest in Corinth never waned. He was ever ready to offer advice and help out. He championed the building of its onsite museum in 1932, a museum that is well worth a lengthy visit, as is the site itself.

Bert would go on to excavate in Cyprus (1932 and 1934 -1952) under the aegis of the University of Pennsylvania and Carl would excavate for the University of Cincinnati in Troy and in Pylos.

Bert at the sacred spring in the 1930s.

In 1936 Bert travelled to the United States as the Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at the Archaeological Institute of America. He was, by this time completely enmeshed in Greek life. He had been on the board of the Athens College (8) from its inception in 1925, and during the Second World War, he alone remained in Greece, keeping the home fires burning (9) and again helping in the Red Cross. In 1947, Bert was awarded the title of ‘Director Emeritus of the American School’.

Ida would die during a sea voyage with Elizabeth in 1954. Bert followed her in 1958. Like the others in the Quartet he would leave his papers, personal and professional, to the ASCSA.

Afterword

I just can’t help liking Bert. His perfectionism and ability to see the whole picture, I find very sympathetic as was his obvious ability as a teacher. His writer’s block must have caused him a lot of anguish. It might even explain why he is the only one of the Quartet who did not seek or obtain a Phd. He was a doer, a fixer, not a writer. His Corinth papers were finally published in 1964, well after his death. Those who know, say they are pretty much the way he wrote them.

The Grave

The Protestant Cemetery, about ten row up from the entrance

The Map

Footnotes

(1) Austrian, Belgian, British, Danish, French, Finnish, German, Irish, Netherlands, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Italian, Swedish, Swiss, American, Canadian, Australian, and a bit of an outlier, Georgian.

(2) Our article on Dolly Goulandris touches on the issue of stolen antiquities: See https://athensfirstcemeteryinenglish.blogspot.com/2025/02/dolly-goulandris-and-cycladic-art.html

(3) Charles Eliot Norton also founded the Archaeological Institute of America in 1879, open to archaeologists and all who share a passion for archaeology. For more on the ASCSA, try 54 Souidias: A History of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, edited by Jenifer Neils.

(4) 95% of School graduates have taught at American universities at some point in their career.

(5) This year, for example, new excavations are happening north and west of the ancient theatre.

(6) Right up until the mid twentieth century, women like my mother-in-law were still washing clothes in communal wash basins in the village.

(7) Capps had even gone as far in 1923 as to ban Bert from taking part in further excavations at Corinth until he published. It didn’t work.

(8) In 1925, the Founding Committee was granted a charter under the name "Hellenic American Educational Foundation," with an American sister society established in New York. The mission of this School would be to educate and shape the character of Greek boys from Greece and from abroad. It is still going strong and is now co-ed.

(9) In 1940, the Greek government had appointed a commission, including Bert, to protect the Corinth Archaeological museum from harm. This involved covering the floors with 40 cms of sand and attempting to somehow protect the delicate artifacts. America entered the war on December 7, 1941 and Bert was arrested in Corinth on December 12, 1941 but was released and allowed return to Athens where he had to share the house on Ploutarchou Street with four German officers.

Sources