Re: On the Myth of Milman Parry, with note on Ernst Badian

Fantastic, Prof. Reece. A beautiful example of what can be done when a
historian digs through the evidence still available -- a happy situation
for modern (and since the days of the *Annales* school, medieval)
historians that classicists can only envy (though we could probably do more
to imitate it by making more use of archaeology, epigraphy, and papyrology).

The end of note 26 has Ernst Badian joining the Harvard Classics Department
in 197, which is a trifle early. In fact I took a course with him on
Alexander the Great at Harvard in the summer of 1967; he was visiting from
Leeds, where he then taught, and mentioned at the time that "if I could
solve the problem of his army, I could writeH my book on Alexander." More
interestingly, he commented, in the wake of the Six Days' War: "We're going
to have to revise our ideas about the lopsided casualty figures that we've
been dismissing as incredible in ancient sources." As for the date, he was
appointed to the History Department, not the Classics Department, in 1971,
and "cross-appointed" to Classics in 1973. On the matter of antisemitism, I
can only mention an odd anecdote: in the spring of '71, in the little
elevator in the back of the Widener stacks, one of the senior members of
the department--I no longer remember who--said to me with no introduction,
"So it's in the bag for Badian, eh?" As a graduate student who spent the
whole day in his carrel I had had no idea that Badian (or anyone else) was
even under consideration (or that there was anything to be considered for),
but it interested me that the professor presumed, presumably because I was
identifiably Jewish (I had begun wearing a yarmulke, which I hadn't had
when I first arrived), that I would know all about it.

On Mon, Jan 14, 2019 at 8:33 PM DANIEL P. Tompkins <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Cool! Urey was a principled ally of Boas and Finley during Spanish Civil
> War and the anti-Hitler prewar activity, and in the ‘50s was again active,
> vainly urging American anti-Communists not to jump the shark.
>
> Dan
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On Jan 14, 2019, at 12:46 PM, Owen Cramer <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >
> > Yes, Dan -- we carpooled to the Lab School with Norman's kids; also at
> Lab were children of Harold Urey, Leo Strauss, Sol Tax.  .  .   .  And in
> the Faculty Apartments where we moved in 1949 was Andre Weil of Bourbaki
> fame (and the brother of the late Simone), also Ralph Tyler and Konrad
> Bloch and Frank Walton.
> > OC
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group <[email protected]>
> On Behalf Of DANIEL P. Tompkins
> > Sent: Monday, January 14, 2019 10:40 AM
> > To: [email protected]
> > Subject: Re: On the Myth of Milman Parry
> >
> > This email originated outside Colorado College. Do not click links or
> attachments unless you know the content is safe.
> >
> >
> > Terrific. Did Dad know Norman Maclean (“River Runs Through It”?)
> >
> > Everyplace was worried about $ in the ‘30s. The president of Columbia,
> after promising otherwise, halved the pay of Dewey and Boas.  Allen Nevins
> wrote a friend that the History Dept was relieved when Merle Curti left for
> Wisconsin, adding that the university depended on undergraduate tuition.
> Holyoke was never wealthy....
> >
> > A different world.  Explains the concern of Bell, Finley, Merton et al
> for ... money. This astounded (some) Brits at a Cambridge conference in
> 2012.
> >
> > Dan
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >> On Jan 14, 2019, at 8:19 AM, Owen Cramer <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> Fascinating! I've been wondering about Parry's death nearly all my
> life, but not constructively enough to undertake what Steve Reece has now
> done, a comprehensive look at what evidence there is. Harvard has been
> protective of its own in often commendable ways, and I had assumed that
> there might be truth in the suicide rumors and that pious cover-up had made
> it unlikely we would ever know the whole story. Carelessness with firearms
> is a national issue, more even today than in 1935, and in that sense I
> suppose Parry's death is tragic and not simply "pointless." I do think that
> insecurity in academic appointments, in that depression period, might have
> loomed large in Parry's mind. I don't suppose that there's definitive
> evidence that he had been assured that, after the next three-year
> appointment and assuming publication of something like The Singer of Tales,
> he would get the tenured spot he must have wanted. My father, a younger and
> less-adventurous scholar with a Princeton Ph.D. (1935), languished at Mt.
> Holyoke with annual pay-cuts after marrying one of their star students
> (also in 1935)--he thought they might be discriminating against him, but
> maybe they were just poor. He left there for the sketchy University of
> Tampa and a dead-end visiting appointment back at Princeton before catching
> on at the University of Chicago in the undergraduate college in 1945.
> Tenure was a problem even back then.
> >> Thanks for sharing this.
> >> Owen Cramer
> >>
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group
> >> <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Steve T Reece
> >> Sent: Sunday, January 13, 2019 6:07 PM
> >> To: [email protected]
> >> Subject: Re: On the Myth of Milman Parry
> >>
> >> This email originated outside Colorado College. Do not click links or
> attachments unless you know the content is safe.
> >>
> >>
> >> Thanks for the heads-up!
> >>
> >> I believe this link will take you to my piece on Parry.
> >>
> >> Again, I'd appreciate any feedback.  There has been so much
> misinformation circulating about the life and death of Milman Parry that I
> am fearful of adding further to it.
> >>
> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdocs.
> >> google.com%2Fdocument%2Fd%2F1ApjYRuK8-o7wfrmr9tDqJIvo_C37Cw0SfQfdPbilo
> >> hE%2Fedit%3Fusp%3Dsharing&amp;data=02%7C01%7COCramer%40COLORADOCOLLEGE
> >> .EDU%7C771af1da087e47999cdb08d67a474add%7Ccfc7b13c12964387b3085de08fd1
> >> 3c99%7C1%7C0%7C636830843958848595&amp;sdata=cJ4IGey5fQIOx0lDk82sfjd8lU
> >> mcZf%2BfcaOH2hxz4F4%3D&amp;reserved=0
> >>
> >>
> >> Steve Reece
> >>
> >>
> >> On Sun, Jan 13, 2019 at 4:51 PM Patrick T. Rourke <[email protected]>
> >> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Attachments are stripped by the listserv (this is to protect
> >>> subscribers from viruses). Could you provide a link to a download?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks!
> >>> Patrick Rourke
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> ____________
> >>> P. T. Rourke
> >>>
> >>>> On Jan 13, 2019, at 5:37 PM, Steve T Reece <
> >>> [email protected]> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Dear Classics Colleagues,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> A few years ago – well, I see now that it was way back in 1993 -
> >>>> there occurred a sustained and wide-ranging discussion on this list
> >>>> about the untimely and tragic deaths of scholars who had worked in
> >>>> the field of Homeric Studies: Milman Parry, Adam Parry, Anne Amory
> >>>> Parry, Michael Ventris, and Colin MacLeod.  There was particular
> >>>> interest in Milman Parry’s life, death, and status at Harvard
> >>>> University.  In that
> >>> discussion,
> >>>> and since then, I’ve observed that there has been a lot of
> >>>> “fluidity” in the details of both the “oral tradition” and the
> >>>> written accounts about Milman Parry.  A fairly rich myth has
> >>>> developed about the man, his life, and his early death.  I’ve
> >>>> collected details from the police report, coroner’s report, death
> >>>> certificate, and contemporary newspaper accounts, with some
> >>>> background details drawn from national censuses, city records,
> >>>> passport applications, ship manifests, etc. and from other
> >>>> contemporary accounts by people who knew the Parry’s, and I’ve
> >>>> discovered that while these details paint an interesting human
> >>>> portrait of Parry in his final days, they lack the sensational
> >>>> features of the “mythic” accounts.  I’m happy to share this in the
> attached document and request additions, subtractions, and corrections from
> those inclined to read it.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Best regards,
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> Steve Reece
> >>>>
> >>>> Professor of Classics
> >>>>
> >>>> St. Olaf College
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> [email protected]
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>>
> >>>> Steve Reece, Professor of Classical Languages Saint Olaf College,
> >>>> Northfield, Minnesota (U.S.A.) 55057
> >>>>
> >>>> Tomson Hall 347 (Office: 786-3378; Home: 663-7035)
> >>>>
> >>>> [email protected]
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwp.st
> >>> o
> >>> laf.edu%2Fclassics%2Fpeople%2Fsteve-reece%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7COCram
> >>> e
> >>> r%40COLORADOCOLLEGE.EDU%7C7fc347ee51b44666d5e108d679bc9b92%7Ccfc7b13c
> >>> 1
> >>> 2964387b3085de08fd13c99%7C1%7C0%7C636830248308124792&amp;sdata=mdruEo
> >>> j
> >>> sFvI3Qrd%2FbU8IgdWyKW70ZdnBqAP%2Fw%2B8%2BKgA%3D&amp;reserved=0
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwp.st
> >>> o
> >>> laf.edu%2Fclassics%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7COCramer%40COLORADOCOLLEGE.ED
> >>> U
> >>> %7C7fc347ee51b44666d5e108d679bc9b92%7Ccfc7b13c12964387b3085de08fd13c9
> >>> 9
> >>> %7C1%7C0%7C636830248308124792&amp;sdata=n4nW95keH8xaDCAVmfoeuMY9W9H2Z
> >>> J
> >>> h1%2BK26tb%2BO2Z4%3D&amp;reserved=0
> >>>> [image: St. Olaf College]
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >>
> >> Steve Reece, Professor of Classical Languages Saint Olaf College,
> >> Northfield, Minnesota (U.S.A.) 55057
> >>
> >> Tomson Hall 347 (Office: 786-3378; Home: 663-7035)
> >>
> >> [email protected]
> >>
> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwp.sto
> >> laf.edu%2Fclassics%2Fpeople%2Fsteve-reece%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7COCrame
> >> r%40COLORADOCOLLEGE.EDU%7C771af1da087e47999cdb08d67a474add%7Ccfc7b13c1
> >> 2964387b3085de08fd13c99%7C1%7C0%7C636830843958858599&amp;sdata=KoFNReh
> >> uGDqjSLNAPzgbAehYkmk8MWQCSc5upOGLGJs%3D&amp;reserved=0
> >>
> >> https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwp.sto
> >> laf.edu%2Fclassics%2F&amp;data=02%7C01%7COCramer%40COLORADOCOLLEGE.EDU
> >> %7C771af1da087e47999cdb08d67a474add%7Ccfc7b13c12964387b3085de08fd13c99
> >> %7C1%7C0%7C636830843958858599&amp;sdata=BXH3Vce9iZrYyaXhBTkvOjSLo0DQYv
> >> 2JPn5VpzGYrdU%3D&amp;reserved=0
> >> [image: St. Olaf College]
>


-- 
Prof. Em. David M. Schaps
Department of Classical Studies
Bar-Ilan University
5290002 Ramat-Gan, Israel
-972-53-312-5666