HESPERIA 76 (2007) HAROLD NORTH FOWLER Pages 5?7-626 ANDTHE BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN STUDY TOURS IN GREECE ABSTRACT Site-based study tours have been integral to the teaching of Greek archaeology at the American School of Classical Studies atAthens (ASCSA) since itwas as founded in 1881, and at other American institutions of higher education one well. The authors present the diary of such tour taken in 1883 by Harold North Fowler, amember of the first class of students at the ASCSA. Fowler's diary demonstrates the importance ?f travel in the training of archaeologists and is of further interest because of the immediacy of the personal impres a sions recorded by student of Greek archaeology toward the end of the 19th century. INTRODUCTION can It iswidely acknowledged that travel be educational and inspirational.1 Since ancient and tour times, pilgrims, missionaries, adventurers, scholars, ists, along with merchants, diplomats, and soldiers, have visited the lands around the Mediterranean.2 The allure of antiquity has remained steady and strong for centuries. to Travel Greece by scholars and students might be said to have begun a a with Cyriacus of Ancona (1391-1452), member of fraternity of Renais 1.We are to Natalia sance merchants who ventured abroad for business.3 was one of grateful Cyriacus archivist of the to Vbgeikoff-Brogan, the first combine his work with the contemplation of ruins. His account American School of Classical Studies of his visits to the cities of Greek antiquity and his collections of coins atAthens, for her in some help finding were and inscriptions made with the true eye of the archaeologist.4 Of his of the photographs that illustrate this we article. We would also like to thank the mercantile activities learn very little; of his inspiration from firsthand editor o? and the of we are in no doubt. Until the to mass Hesperia anonymous knowledge antiquities floodgates reviewers for their on were suggestions tourism opened in the 20th century, many travelers who followed text. improving the to Cyriacus Greece had similar interests and motivations. From Jacob Spon 2. Eisner 1991. to and George Wheler in the 17th century SirWilliam Gell in the early 3.Weiss 1969, pp. 137-144; Bodnar to 2003. 19th, travelers aspired experience Greek antiquities at their source.5 Here we are interested in the of American educational travel 4. Schnapp 1993, pp. 110-114. emergence 5. Gell 1823. in as nascent Spon 1678; the 19th century part of the discipline of Greek archaeology ? The American School of Classical Studies at Athens 598 PRISCILLA M. MURRAY AND CURTIS N. RUNNELS j??t:.L i;l r': :i? 'r y-?,_ ?:;?; II.Y-a :ii-? :I:i ::: -ii-:i ::::::: -???* i ?-- :;:-: ::.:: ?:?::: : : ?:-?---: ::?i::? 1. Harold North Fowler as a :I Figure Harvard in 1880. undergraduate Photo courtesy Harvard University Archives (Aegean prehistory, Classical and Byzantine studies). Upper-class, wealthy young men such as the American Nicholas Biddle undertook the Grand to an Tour of Europe refine their knowledge of antiquity in informal way to a were and acquire the polish of world view. They joined in the late 19th as century by numbers of students who traveled part of their professional training. The introduction of steam power encouraged the growth in student as as travel. Regularly scheduled steamships and trains, well the abolition of quarantine laws that had previously increased the time required for travel, made it easier for American students, even those of modest means, to explore the Greek world. In Greece, the American School of Classical Studies atAthens (hence or was forth, the School ASCSA) founded in 1881 by the Archaeological In to stitute of America (AIA) facilitate the study of antiquity by students from the United States.6 The founders and early directors of the School wished to rectify the neglect of archaeology in American institutions.7 The first ASCSA class learned Greek archaeology in part through field trips. This was approach firmly established by 1902 when Thomas Seymour wrote, 6. Seymour 1902; Lord 1947; in a summary of the first 20 years of the School, "one of the important part Dyson 1998, pp. 53-55. work of our School at Athens is to our students not to learn help simply 7.Winterer 2002, pp. 94,100. what has been said and published about Greece and its monuments, but 8. Seymour 1902, p. 19. 9. His "Sicilian also to become acquainted with Greece and its monuments themselves."8 diaries, Expedition 12 to a new March 23-April 1883," "Trip Harold North Fowler, graduate from Harvard College and one Thebes ect [sic]" and "Athens, of the earliest members of the AI was one of the first to Delphi, A, students attend are Dresden June-July 1883," in the the School (Fig. 1). Fowler kept diaries of the journeys he made while he archives of Case Western Reserve was a School is a regular member.9 One of these the record of trip around University. HAROLD NORTH FOWLER AND STUDY TOURS IN GREECE 599 we a the P?loponn?se in April 1883. In the following pages, present dis cussion and transcription of this diary in order to illustrate the importance of site-based study tours in the training of American archaeologists and the determination displayed by those early students in overcoming the difficulties of travel in Greece.10 AMERICAN TRAVELERS IN GREECE can Travel to and within Greece be divided roughly into two periods. In the era preceding the introduction of steam power in the 19th century, was travel proceeded by sail, horse, and foot, and it slow, uncertain, and dangerous. In the period of steamships and trains, the telegraph, and the was more abolition of the quarantine, travel faster, predictable, and less dangerous.11 era on Travelers during the first experienced conditions the road that would have been familiar to Pausanias in the 2nd century A.D. Fernand Braudel noted that in the 16th century itwas common for storms, adverse a winds and currents, the lack of ship, and the absence of proper charts to a an turn journey in theMediterranean into ordeal. His review of recorded were journeys shows that two to three months needed to traverse the length of the Mediterranean.12 Once inGreece, travelers followed unmarked, unmaintained, and un cart on paved bridle paths and tracks foot and by horse, carriage, and oxcart. more a They seldom covered than 20 miles day, often much less if the road, the weather, brigands, or accidents slowed their progress. Even for short was no trips, there way to avoid such impediments except by interrogating travelers coming from the other direction about conditions on the road or by sending messengers and scouts ahead to inquire. Travelers took their at lodging the end of each day wherever they could find it. Carrying sup on was as was plies pack animals necessary, food usually difficult to procure or along the road (Fig. 2). Except for government-maintained post stage was no systems, there regular provision for transportation, lodging, food, or was an security for travelers.13 Travel for centuries exercise in "roughing it," in the most literal, brutal sense. In addition, quarantines were established in the wake of the devastat ing and chronic outbreaks of plague that followed the 14th-century Black cause Death. These could delays of days if not weeks in each direction a when crossing border, extending trips into grueling journeys of many warns months' duration. Murray's Hand-Book for 1845 that quarantine "is 10. The diary has recently been the to which travelers in the East are on their donated to theASCSA Archives by the greatest annoyance exposed return to can no means authors. Europe. It is rigidly enforced, and by be evaded."14 Feifer or master a a ll.Tregaskis 1979, pp. 1-11; The captain of ship had to present bill of health at each port 1985, pp. 135-161; Hibbert 1987, on one of call. Depending the port from which had embarked, conditions 219-229. pp. on in the country, and the boat itself, travelers could be required to stay in 12. Braudel 1976, pp. 360-363. a lazaretto or hostel from 10 to 40 The 13.Tregaskis 1979, pp. 7-11; Hib quarantine anywhere days. lodging and which could be were at the bert 1987, pp. 19-39,215-233. food, appallingly bad, provided voyagers own 14. Murray 1845, p. xxvi. expense. 6oO PRISCILLA M. MURRAY AND CURTIS N. RUNNELS Figure 2. On the trail inArcadia with a an donkey being driven by agoyiatis (muleteer). Photo courtesy ASCSA Archives, Theodore W. Heermance Papers to Americans rarely traveled Greece during this period. One of the to a was a first leave record of his travels Nicholas Biddle, 20-year-old at who landed Patras in the spring of 1806. The editor of Biddies letters and travel diaries noted the prominence of certain classical ideals in those to writings, revealing "both why travel the Mediterranean, and especially travel to was useful and even a Greece, thought necessary for young man, and what effects this journey could have upon the traveler."15The purpose s was to on of Biddle trip mold his views politics and conduct in accordance with the ideals of Graeco-Roman antiquity.16 In this, Biddle is said to be "very much the philosophic traveler in quest of information, and he travels the sake own ... for of his education generally avoiding the picturesque and ... any subjective treatment of the landscape he has little emotion for wild places, because he went to the Mediterranean to learn and not to feel."17 In went other words, he seeking education through personal experience of the relics of classical culture in their setting, not unlike the American students who would follow him.