125th Anniversary of the Society in 2003/2004 session
The Hellenic Society in its 125th Year: A Message from the President
As we enter our 125th year, the Hellenic Society continues to flourish. Membership of the Society remains steady and, importantly, the number of students is as buoyant as ever. To celebrate our anniversary, the academic programme for the 2003-2004 session will feature a range of special events, lectures, and colloquia - and you will find the details listed in the following pages. I do hope that you will want to participate, and we look forward to seeing many of our members at these events.
Our publications remain the academic backbone of the Society. High quality articles and reviews are published annually in the Journal of Hellenic Studies; and excavations in Greece, and in those lands that the Greeks and their culture penetrated, are summarised in the annual Archaeological Reports, an indispensable source of information to all those concerned with the material side of Greek civilization. Since our Centenary in 1979, the Society has published 432 scholarly articles and notes; and 59 surveys of archaeology in Greece and regional reports: an outstanding academic contribution. From its inception, the Society has also published separate monographs, and this form of activity has been revived recently with two outstanding, and very different, books: Greek Scripts, a wonderful and fully illustrated introduction to the topic, and Homer, Tragedy and Beyond, a collection of essays by young scholars in honour of Professor Pat Easterling, past SPHS President.
The Society’s physical base moved in 1997 from Gordon Square to Senate House, where it, and the whole Institute of Classical Studies, is now at the heart of the University of London’s School of Advanced Studies. This move enabled the Joint Library of the Hellenic and Roman Societies - our second major strength - to be housed in more spacious accommodation, and the number of students and scholars making use of the excellent facilities has increased. In the last twenty-five years, the Library which we support and share with the Institute has doubled from 50,000 volumes to over 100,000 volumes - making it one of the finest research centres for Classics in the world.
And our third major endeavour is to respond to calls for financial assistance to projects promoting the study of Greece. In many recent years, as much as 20% of the Society’s income has been awarded in such grants. Every year the Council of the Society awards monies to conferences, colloquia, Greek drama projects, student bursary schemes, and major projects concerning Hellenic Studies; the Dover Fund Sub-Committee awards funds to young scholars and graduate students; the Schools Sub-Committee awards grants to summer schools, teaching projects and helps individual schools with the purchase of books and resources, and provides bursaries to teachers attending the biennial courses at the British School at Athens. Currently the Society is making large annual donations to the Cambridge Greek Lexicon Project, to replace on modern philological lines Liddell & Scott’s Intermediate Greek Lexicon. Since 1979, our annual reports show that we have given over £240,000 in grants: to nearly 375 projects relating to Hellenic Studies, 330 individual schools, and 40 young scholars and graduate students.
The achievements of the last twenty-five years, of which the Society is rightfully proud, have only been possible because of the generosity of the Society’s members and our donors. As other funding sources for schools and universities become fewer and less generous, the Council of the Society is determined to increase the support and financial aid which it can give. We must continue to protect and maintain the study of Greek and Greece in schools, and we have exciting new projects to re-introduce Hellenic Studies at all levels of schooling. Our regular subscription income is hard pressed to cover the costs of our publications, our premises, and the finances needed to support the Library. To be able to continue and increase our grants for educational purposes we are launching a 125th Anniversary Appeal - to place our support for schools at the very heart of what we do for our subject.
So I urge you to read about our special Schools Programme and our 125th Anniversary Appeal, and to make your contribution to this excellent cause.
Professor Robin Osborne, President
Launch of the 125th Anniversary Appeal and the Society’s Schools Programme
In the Appeal leaflet issued at the time of our Centenary in 1979, reference was made to the confidence that our founders must have felt in the study of classical Greek language and literature when they set about establishing a Society to further research and scholarship in all aspects of Greek and Greek civilization. A hundred years later, the paradox of the decline in the teaching of ancient Greek in contrast to the attraction that Greece holds in the eyes of the general public was stressed. Twenty-five years on, that paradox has certainly not diminished, indeed it has even increased. The Society needs to maintain a high standard of scholarship - and this is as important now as it was at the time of the Society’s foundation in 1879. But the support the Society can offer to schools is just as vital to ensure the continuation of our subject in future years.
Within schools the position of the Greek language continues to be perilous. Although student numbers in Classical Civilization courses are still buoyant, state schools now have very few pupils learning Greek, and the numbers in independent schools have dropped markedly. Too many times the school budget does not allow for the proper maintenance of resources in Classics, let alone provide for expansion or the introduction of Greek even when there is a demand. Our challenge is to continue to protect the place of Greek with direct funding to schools in difficulty. On-line learning, by which Greek can be learned in schools that have no resident Greek teacher, and other electronic developments will become important elements in teaching in the near future. These are crucial areas, which we are anxious to foster and to support with funds.
The Schools Sub-Committee of the Society is preparing a special Programme of activities for Schools to mark our anniversary season. We will be raising the profile of Greek and Hellenic Studies in schools with a Quiz and a national Schools Competition, investigating the mythology, literature, language, history and the heritage of Greece. We will consider special funding to schools who wish to put on a Greek-themed activity to help the Society celebrate its 125th anniversary, and schools will be circulated with ideas for speakers, drama groups, Greek Days and presentations on Greek life and culture. In conjunction with the Joint Association of Classical Teachers, the Society will be offering various teaching materials and special resources to schools, including books and materials generously donated by the Greek Embassy and the Centre for Acropolis Studies in Athens. The Sub-Committee is working with JACT to provide an information pack on supporting and introducing Greek teaching for schools; and we are investigating how a series of national events can utilise the Museum and Education services to aid primary teachers on Greek themes.
This present Appeal, in the Society’s 125th Anniversary year, is directed especially towards the study of Greek and Greece in schools. This would no doubt have seemed strange to the scholars of yesteryear, but today the high-level of research that is being published shows that the subject attracts as bright a class of scholar as ever. It is to the fostering of the early growth of our subject that we must turn our earnest attention.
Please send your donation (and gift aid declaration) with the enclosed form to the 125th Anniversary Appeal, Hellenic Society, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU.
Professor Ken Saunders, Hon Treasurer
Professor Brian Sparkes, Hon Secretary & Chairman of Schools Sub-Committee
You can download an Appeal and Gift Aid form here in either MS Word (.doc) or Acrobat Reader (.pdf) format.