Elizabeth Blegen

Elizabeth Denny Pierce was born June 26, 1888 in Allegheny, Pennsylvania to Flora McKnight and William Lemmex Pierce. She attended Vassar College from 1906 to 1910, and in 1912 she obtained an MA in Latin.[1][3]

In her first year at Vassar, Pierce met Ida Thallon, who was to have a profound influence on her life and work. Thallon was a Professor in the Department of Greek and Roman Studies.[4] The two women formed an intimate student/mentor relationship that developed into an intimate personal relationship which continued after Pierce left for graduate work at Columbia University.[4] When Pierce returned to Vassar to teach art history in 1915, the couple started living in adjacent rooms in Davidson house on campus; their relationship at this time has been described as a 'Boston marriage'.[5]

From 1915 until 1922, Pierce taught Art History at Vassar.[3] She was granted her PhD from Columbia in 1922. Her dissertation as well as her Master's thesis was on the intellectual life of Gaius Asinius Pollio, a Roman Consul (40 BC) and historian.[1] She also was an assistant curator at Vassar's Art Gallery for that seven-year period.[1] She travelled to Greece with Thallon in 1921. Her time in Greece inspired her to enroll in the American School of Classical Studies (ASCSA).

Pierce attended ASCSA from 1922 to 1923 where she became friends with the school's director, Bert Hodge Hill, and archeologist Carl Blegen. Carl Blegen taught prehistory and general topography classes at the school.[3] Pierce and Blegen's friendship quickly turned into romance and Blegen proposed marriage; Pierce initially accepted but then broke off the engagement as she did not wish to end her relationship with Thallon.[4][5] Pierce returned to the United States and spent the spring of 1924 working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[3] Meanwhile, a plan was formed by Blegen, Pierce, and Hodge Hill (who appears to have had unreciprocated romantic feelings for Blegen) that Hodge Hill and Thallon would marry at the same time as Pierce and Blegen, and the four would live together; Thallon agreed on condition that she and Pierce would continue to travel and spend time together away from their husbands, and the two couples married in 1924.[4][5]

The four archeologists, who referred to themselves as "the Family", "the quartet", and "the Pro Par" (short for "Professional Partnership"), had a strong and interconnected relationship both professionally and personally.[5] Thallon Hill and Pierce Blegen often worked together on excavations, cataloguing materials and publishing findings from excavations run by both their husbands.[6][3] During her first year of marriage, Pierce Blegen taught sculpture classes at ASCS. One of her first projects with Thallon Hill was assisting her in the cataloguing of new finds from the excavation of Corinth, in collaboration with Elizabeth Van Buren, a specialist in terracottas.[6] Pierce Blegen participated in Carl Blegen's excavations at Prosymna (1927–1928), Troy (1932–1938) and Pylos (1939, 1952–1958).[1]

Beginning in 1925 and continuing until 1952, Pierce Blegen authored the "Newsletter from Athens", a regular contribution to the American Journal of Archaeology. In the personal correspondence of archeologist Lucy Shoe Merritt (May 4, 1997) she described Blegen's newsletter: "Her reports were the results of close, careful understanding, first-hand observation and discussion with the excavators whom she grew to know so well and who admired and trusted her with their latest discoveries and thoughts about them (the excavations).[1]

In 1929, Pierce Blegen purchased a house on 9 Ploutarchou Street in Athens as a home for the family.[4] The house became a popular meeting place for archeologists, students of all foreign schools, diplomats, Vassar alumnae, Greek scholars, Fulbright scholars, and the staff of the American embassy.[7]

During World War II, Hodge Hill remained in Athens to look after the home on Ploutarchou Street while Thallon Hill moved to the United States with the Blegens for the duration of the war. The three lived in Cincinnati where Carl Blegen was a professor of classical archeology at the University of Cincinnati.[7]

Pierce Blegen's final work in field excavation was at Pylos in 1958. That year she had a debilitating stroke that confined her to a wheelchair for the remainder of her life. Thallon Hill had died four years previously in 1954. Hodge Hill died in 1958.[8] In 1963, Elizabeth Pierce Blegen deeded their home to the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.[3] She died Sept 21, 1966 in Athens.[3] Carl Blegen died in 1971.[1] The four members of the Quartet are buried next to each other in the First Cemetery of Athens.[3][8][9]

In 2011, Rachel Kitzinger, professor of classics and dean of Planning and Academic Affairs summarized Pierce Blegen's importance and influence on Vassar's Department of Greek and Roman Studies: "Of all the distinguished women classicists who were involved early on with the Vassar department, Elizabeth Pierce Blegen has had the most long-lasting effect on the department. Her will bequeathed an endowment to the department to support research in classical antiquity and has allowed the department to bring a research fellow or distinguished professor to the college every year to teach a course and do research."[10]

• "A Roman Colony in the Alps: Aosta", Art and Archeology, (1922), p. 83–90
• "A Daedalid in the Skimatari Museum", American Journal of Archaeology, Vol 28. (1924), p. 267–275.
• "Newsletter from Greece", American Journal of Archaeology, (1925–1952)
• "Recent Discoveries on Greek and Roman Art", Gazette des Beaux-Arts, (1942), p. 63–76