A Quartet of Classicists

An Interview

by Sue Weaver Schopf

The field of classical civilizations attracts a certain kind of scholar: someone in love with the past who is interested in decoding a complex symbolic system. There’s a fascination with ancient languages, customs, and mythologies and a love of “digging” for evidence.

In 2006 four new classics scholars graduated from the Master of Liberal Arts Program: George Frode, Thomas Haggard, Mary Laub, and Aimée Scorziello. They are a unique group: a salesperson, a lawyer, an investor, and a self-described “perpetual student.” Following is an interview with the four new scholars.

George Frode

Thomas Haggard

Mary Laub

Aimée Scorziello

Schopf: What is your profession, and how did you happen to come to the Harvard Extension School and the study of classics?

Frode: I work for New Media Manufacturing, which represents manufacturing suppliers for publishing companies. I’ve also worked at Houghton Mifflin and, even longer ago, I was a newspaper reporter and editor. My first experience in Extension was in the administration and management certificate program, which I pursued to help me in my work. One day I saw an Extension School ad featuring Professor Gregory Nagy. I enrolled in his class and was hooked.

Haggard: I’ve been an attorney for 19 years, but I came from an undergraduate background in political science and also earned a master’s degree in education. The way I learned about the Extension School is amusing. One of my clients fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a house in Marblehead; he had been working late in the computer lab at Extension! My love of history is what drew me here. I enrolled in Greg Nagy’s Introduction to Greek Literature.

Laub: I’m a businesswoman–investor. Ten years ago, I suggested that my son spend the summer in Cambridge taking a writing class in the Harvard Summer School, but he suggested that I take the class instead! I lived in Texas, so I came up for the summer. I retired and moved to Cambridge in 1997. Soon after, I took my first classics course. I had read a translation of the Greek Anthology at age 13. I thought they were such funny, tragic, spare poems, and I just loved them. They led me to Homer and, at Extension, to Greg Nagy.

Scorziello: My profession? Perpetual student! Although I have also worked as a teaching assistant to you and Professor David Mitten, and as a curatorial assistant in the Sackler Art Museum. I’ve spent two seasons on the Pompeiian Archaeological Research Project in Porta Stabia. I came to Extension to earn the Bachelor of Liberal Arts (ALB) degree in fall 1988. I had already made one trip to Pompeii, just out of high school. After several Harvard classics courses and a year abroad studying at Oxford, I had no doubts about the field I wanted to pursue.

Schopf: Most of you began with a Greg Nagy course. How did this course pave the way for your future studies?

Frode: I was amazed by Greg’s emphasis on individual Greek words and what they told us about the culture. I learned to pay careful attention to language as I never had before.

Haggard: Yes, the vocabulary actually provided clues for interpreting the reading. I also loved that Greg had a great website and that he set up an online discussion with the law school about the law and classical texts. He made me see how ideas from the classical world have abiding meaning.

Laub: I became interested in the history and role of poets and stories in the ancient Greek world. In Greg’s Greek heroes course, Greek storytelling is presented in the context of Greek language and culture.

Schopf: Did you study Greek or Latin as part of your work in the field?

Haggard: I did poorly in languages in college. One of the things that attracted me to the ALM Program was that a foreign language background wasn’t necessary. However, if I could do it all over again, I would take Latin or Greek first. My studies here have taught me how knowledge of classical languages opens many doors.

Scorziello: If you plan to go into the profession, you are expected to have French, German, and Italian in addition to the classical languages. So I’ve had two semesters of Latin, a full year of Greek in Harvard College as an undergraduate, as well as French and Italian. During my year at Oxford, I studied German. When I was researching my thesis topic on ancient Roman art, I found that most of the scholarship was in Italian; without the language training I would have missed out on some of the most important work done in this field.

Schopf: Tell me about your experience writing the thesis. All four of you received rave reviews from your thesis directors, urging you to publish your work.

Frode: I knew I wanted to do something on Alexander the Great; the problem was that everything on the subject was interesting to me at first, and so much had been done on it already. For a while I thought I would never find anything new to say. Then I stumbled on the Greek Alexander Romance, written hundreds of years after Alexander’s death, in the Hellenistic period. It seemed like a modern work of science fiction: a hodge-podge of historical accounts, folklore, myths, letters (both fake and genuine), fantasy encounters with bizarre beasts and out-of-this-world peoples, and voyages above and below the earth. I wondered how all of these elements came to be knitted together at this particular moment in history and how the work reflected not only the Hellenistic period’s attitudes toward Alexander but also the changing literary tastes of the day. That became the core of my research since most scholars seem to have underestimated the value of the work as a key to understanding these issues.

Haggard: There was a book by Royston Lambert on the relationship between the Roman emperor Hadrian and his young favorite, Antinous, that had been on my shelf for many years. For a long time, this was a taboo topic in scholarship—the love of a 50-year-old emperor for an 18-year-old boy. Most scholars either glossed over the relationship or ignored it. Royston focused chiefly on the representations of Antinous in sculpture, coins, and intaglio. What he didn’t do, I thought, was posit convincing explanations for the tremendous differences among the representations. In some, Antinous is depicted as an Eastern youth; in others, he is more mature, with increasingly Roman features. I hypothesized that these images evolved from romantic tributes to a propagandistic promotion of Antinous as a worthy hero, thus allowing Hadrian to give special significance to his beloved while protecting his own reputation. Among the things I learned from the research is that continuing taboos on homosexuality can stifle scholarship and lead researchers to draw erroneous conclusions about the nature and purpose of artistic representations.

Laub: My thesis examined the presence of the myth of the Oresteia in the Odyssey. It is a grisly tale of child killings, cannibalism, incest, and matricide; references to it occur 24 times in this work. I wondered how these repetitions contributed to the deep structure of the epic and what their narrative function was. By reexamining the myth, the diverse ways in which the story is retold in the Odyssey, and the nature of the tellers of the story, I concluded that it was crucial to Odysseus and Telemakhus. It provided Odysseus with the metaphors he needed to think through his situation, to decide what to reveal and what to keep hidden, and to carry out the plans that led to his nostos and resumption of his life as king and husband. For Telemakhus, the myth provided the challenges and victories he needed to become part of his father’s philos and to help defeat the suitors plaguing Penelope.

Scorziello: I worked on the representation of dwarfs in Roman art. Dwarfs were thought to have tremendous power in the ancient world: people believed they could dispose of evil influences. They also induced laughter, which was likewise thought to counter evil forces. My research revealed that a large body of apotropaic Roman art [works believed to ward off bad luck or evil] contained representations of dwarfs. These included bronzes, works of terra-cotta, mosaics, wall paintings, and amulets. No scholar had seemed to consider that the image of the dwarf in art may have given dwarfs a place of influence in society. Most studies focused on dwarfs as objects of servitude, scorn, or amusement, or as mere oddities. Because of Roman superstition, I believed that the presumed apotropaic power of the dwarf must surely have given dwarfs an elevated position.

Gregory Nagy (on screen) lectures from Washington, DC, during his distance education class

Who is Greg Nagy? Gregory Nagy, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature and professor of comparative literature at Harvard, has been teaching at the Extension School for nearly 25 years. According to Dean Mary Higgins, “He’s always been pushing the envelope to expand access to Harvard.” His course on Greek heroes, which is part of Harvard College’s Core Curriculum, was one of the first liberal arts courses to be offered online at the Extension School. “He is totally committed to continuing education students,” Higgins says. To read more about Nagy’s influence on other alumni, read "Four Who Gave Back."