Ida Thallon Hill

Born August 11, 1875, New York Died December 14, 1954, Athens

About ten rows up on the left, up the lane leading from the entrance to the Protestant Cemetery

If Ida Thallon had never left her teaching post at Vassar, she would have had a great career. Adept in Greek, Latin, and History, she taught them all until her relationship with fellow teacher Elizabeth ‘Libbie” Pierce brought her permanently to Athens, to marriage at 49, and to a second career focused on archaeology. Ida had spent two years as a Fellow at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens from 1901-1903 and it was her happy experience there that prompted her to bring her partner, Elizabeth Pierce, to Greece - so she could experience the School for herself.

If the school’s assistant director Carl Blegen had not fallen in love with Elizabeth, if Elizabeth had not reciprocated, and if school director Bert Hill Hodge had not been willing, Ida may have spent a rather lonely old age in the United States. But, Fate, with a little help from Carl, determined a happier ending. This is a love story with a difference.

Her Life

Ida Thallon was born on August 11, 1875, one of the two daughters of John and Grace Thallon. She attended high school at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn New York, one of the high schools exclusively for girls which had begun to operate in the United States after 1850.

The school Ida attended is still operating. Today it is coeducational.

During the first part of the 19^th century, the secondary education of males in America was deemed far more important than that of females. The general belief was that primary school was good enough for girls who, after all, were destined to marry, have children, and remain in the home. Even Emma Willard (1787–1870), a woman who championed high school education for women in the United States saw female secondary education as the best means for women to ‘find their place in society.’ By that she meant the woman as homemaker and mother. She considered the notion of women receiving a college education ‘absurd’. (1)

Things moved along fairly quickly after 1860 when several women’s colleges were founded: Vassar in 1865, Wellesley and Smith in 1875, Bryn Mawr in 1885, Radcliffe in 1879, and Barnard in 1889. The idea of men and women being educated together would have been altogether too radical a departure from accepted norms. It was from Vassar that Ida obtained her AB in 1897. While not quite a pioneer, she was fortunate to have ridden the wave of educational opportunities for women in the United States.

Ida (left) at Vassar in 1897

Upon graduating, she would still face a society which may have been ready for female nurses, librarians or teachers but not much else. Back then, a woman with scholarly ambitions needed to have supportive parents (which I suspect Ida had) and be so clever that her ambitions could not be denied (which I suspect she was).

In 1899, Ida set out with fellow Vassar graduate, Lida Shaw King (2) on a European tour and to attend the 1901-2 session of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She attended lectures and met archaeologists, including the American adventurer/archaeologist Harriet Boyd. (3) Ida, became smitten enough with archaeology to want to stay on an extra year.

The School in 1902

Although the ASCSA had accepted women from the get go, and accepted its first female student in 1885, Ida soon saw that women were not being treated equally with the male students. The school was reluctant to allow women to take part in excavations – too rough and tough apparently. Ida pushed against this prejudice. She managed to wangle a place for herself and Lida on the team excavating a cave dedicated to Pan near Vari in Attica. They were the first women to excavate in an archaeological site in Greece. (4)

In the cave they found inscription lamps, coins, and 7 marble reliefs of Pan, Hermes and the Nymphs.

Pan caves with marble votives like the one above were common in ancient Greece. At Vari, 50 fragments of 7 votives were unearthed and are now in the National Archaeology Museum of Athens

Ida was chosen to prepare a paper on these marble reliefs. It was published in The American Journal of Archaeology in 1903. The reliefs were not earth shattering discoveries, but her report was excellent: clear, meticulous, and scholarly and can be read on line today.(5) The School offered Ida and Lida the publication of terra cottas from their prime site at the time: Corinth.

During her two years at the ASCSA Ida visited many archaeological sites and met fellow student Bert Hodge Hill, one of the 16 students in her class. She liked him but never dreamed they would eventually marry. At the same time, she completed her Master’s thesis on Geometric vases.

Back to Vassar

An offer to teach Greek at her alma mater, Vassar, took her back to the United States. Ida taught there for two years before enrolling in New York’s Columbia University from which she earned her PhD in 1905 with a dissertation on the dating of the sculptor Damophon in Arkadia’s Lycosoura.

Damophon’s handiwork

Lycosoura is on Mount Lykaion, one of the most mysterious mountains in the Peloponnese with werewolves, rain making rituals, and theriomorphic figures on the Maiden’s cloak. (6)

From 1906 until 1924, Ida would teach Latin for two years and then history. In 1914 she published her first book, Readings in Greek History. It was very well received.

In 1916, she published an article arguing that interdisciplinary approaches to history and archaeology would benefit both fields. Here she was very much ahead of her time. 1919 saw her publish an article on Troy, probably never imagining she would ever do any digging there. She became an associate professor in 1916.

Ida Meets Elizabeth Pierce

Ida might have continued teaching at Vassar until retirement if a strange chain of events had not brought her back to live permanently in Greece. It all began in 1906 although Ida did not know it at the time. In that year, 19 year old Elizabeth “Libbie” Pierce had attended Ida’s freshman course in Latin. Ida who was 31 at the time, became her friend and mentor. Elizabeth would follow in Ida’s footsteps, - an AB from Vassar in 1910, her masters in 1912 , and further studies at Columbia before returning to Vassar in 1915 to an assistant curatorship at the Vassar art gallery and to teach Art History.

Their ‘Boston Marriage’

It was after 1915 that Elizabeth and Ida established the kind of relationship that at the time was called a Boston marriage (7) in which two women who were independent of financial support from a man cohabitated. In a society where being unmarried was a stigma and an unmarried woman living alone was treated with a certain amount of suspicion, it made sense. These women could pursue their careers in congenial and supportive company. The very fact that colleges like Vassar were female only would have encouraged such friendships to form. Trading an interesting and fulfilling career for a wedding ring and the home was not every educated woman’s dream, yet that is exactly what society expected women like Ida to do if they did marry.

It was sometime after 1915, that Ida and Elizabeth decided to share their lives in this way. It was a loving relationship; to what degree it was sexual is their own business.

Greece

In 1921 they decided to travel to Greece together. Ida would renew her acquaintance with the ASCSA and Elizabeth would enrol in the school for the 1922-3 school year.

Ida and Elizabeth in 1920

Ida, Elizabeth, Carl, and Bert

The ASCSA was the backdrop for the crisis and the resolution of the drama which unfolded that year. Assistant Director Carl Blegen, then in his mid thirties, fell head over heels in love with Elizabeth. She reciprocated at first and accepted his proposal of marriage. She then withdrew it because she did not want to give up her relationship with Ida. Apparently, Ida had (perhaps reluctantly?) given her blessing. It must have been a very difficult time for Ida. She was well into middle age and the love of her life was about to disappear.

It was Carl who found a solution - if only his friend Bert Hodge Hill, then director of the ASCSA, could be persuaded…

Bert was unmarried and just one year older than Ida; they knew each other; they had shared interests. What if Carl married Elizabeth and Bert married Ida and they all lived together?

Carl (left) and Bert (right) both dapper in 1915

In our age of polyamory, many might not blink at such an arrangement, but this was 1924 and social norms had to be observed. There were details to be worked out. Ida and Elizabeth were to have their time alone and time to travel alone together, as were Bert and Carl.

It was a solution which worked although there may have been one or two rough patches on the way to harmony at 9 Ploutarchou Street in Kolonaki, the house where all four were to live happily together from 1929 until Ida’s death in 1954.

9 Ploutarchou Street is today the seat of the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation which promotes Greek Culture and Arts within and outside of Greece .Elizabeth had willed it to the ASCSA.

I suspect that their shared interest in archaeology, that most collaborative of sciences, provided some of the ‘glue’ that kept the ‘Athenian Quartet’ (Carl’s term) together. For the rest of their lives each was in an excellent position to assist the other in their many archaeological endeavours and they all did. The fact that they called themselves the pro pars (for professional partnership) hints at the role their shared interests in archaeology must have played in their lives.

Married Life and Bert’s Dismissal from the ASCSA

Ida’s marriage did not result in her giving up her career. Instead, it enhanced it.

As the wife of the director of the ASCSA, she was now surrounded by archaeologists. By helping Bert in Corinth and Carl in his excavations at Prosymna in 1925, she could add field archaeology to her other talents.

Prosymna, in the Argolid, began in the Neolithic period existed well into the Mycenean. Carl excated 53 Mycenean chamber tombs there. The site is famous for its Sanctuary of Hera, Argos’ most important goddess.

Ida resumed the task of publishing the terracottas of Corinth which she and Lida had begun so many years before. Elizabeth became her helper in the renewed project because Lida had died in 1922.

It was published in 1929

Ida was less successful in her effort to help Bert complete his reports on his Corinth finds. Even she could not bring poor Bert to the finish line and, to the shock and dismay of the ‘Quartet’, Bert’s contract as director of the ASCSA was not renewed in 1926. Ida was furious; she believed that the ASCSA’s management committee were overlooking many of Bert’s other sterling qualities, which indeed they were.

Ida ‘at home’

Still, life went on and Ida herself participated in digs at Prosymna in 1927-8, at Troy (for Carl) from 1932-8 and finally (for Carl) at Pylos. Bert would conduct excavations in Cyprus for the University of Pennsylvania in 1932 and from 1932 to 38. Ida helped there as well.

She and Elizabeth did have their time together when needed. In 1937 and 8 they took two extensive tours of the Balkans together with their Greek driver, visiting Northern Macedonia, Kosovo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia at one go, quite an adventure, especially for Ida who was well into her sixties.

During World War II, Ida, Carl and Elizabeth went to the United States while Bert remained in Greece. Ida worked on a book during that period which she never finished but, after the war, she did complete her excellent The Ancient City of Athens which you can read on line. It reminds me of Pausanias updated: full of the latest archaeological discoveries and rather less speculation on arcane rites.

Published in 1954

Ida died on a return voyage to Greece, after a visit to the United States. Elizabeth was at her side. She was 74. That same year she had assisted Carl at Pylos. What a life!

The Grave

Ida and Bert are just a few rows west of Elizabeth and Carl

The Map

Footnotes

(1) In 1840, Catherine Elizabeth Brewer Benson became the first woman in America to receive a tertiary degree. It was from Wesleyan, the first college in the world chartered to grant degrees to women.

(2) Lida Shaw King, another Vassar graduate, was 7 years older than Ida and attended the ASCSA as the Agnes Hoppin Memorial Fellow. This was a fellowship established in 1898 intended to “lift the restrictions on women in the study of archaeology". She would later become the dean of Pembroke college, the female co-ordinate of Brown University.

(3) Harriet Boyd, a Smith College graduate in classics, was an amazing woman who, because of the lack of opportunity to excavate in Greece, went to Crete, then under Ottoman control, to try her luck. She began at Kavousi and years later discovered the Minoan site of Gourna.

(4) Harriet Boyd excavated before Ida but Crete was not yet part of Greece.

(5) See https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/496691.pdf) .

(6) I once sat on the tiered seating arrangement outside of the Lykosoura temple’s unusual side door - waiting for “something”. Nothing happened. But the site is so evocative, I may try again.

(7) The term “Boston marriage” resulted from a relationship described by Henry James in The Bostonians. The term ‘Wellesleyan marriage’ was sometimes used because so many female graduates of that college entered into the arrangement.

Sources

nataliavogeikoff.com From the Archivist's Notebook

https://nataliavogeikoff.com/2018/09/02/touring-the-balkans-with-the-ladies-of-ploutarchou-9/

https://www.brown.edu/Research/Breaking_Ground/bios/Hill_Ida%20Thallon.pdf

Πέμπτη 8 Ιανουαρίου 2026

Ida Thallon Hill

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