Read an Excerpt

Classical Spies

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS

Chapter One

OCTOBER 28, 1940, DAWNED CLEAR and bright over Mt. Hymettus. Nine men gathered on the summit, though it was a military zone and Greece's fascist dictator, General Ioannis Metaxas, had just declared war. Rodney Young dwarfed the others. Once the Cary Grantish darling of New York debutante balls, Young had spent the last eight summers excavating in and around Athens with this band of men. He stood erect in his excavation uniform: a tawny long-sleeved shirt open at the neck, cuffs rolled up, and jodhpurs tucked into tall black boots, his dark hair bleached and his smooth skin leathered by the Mediterranean sun. Young savored the god's eye view over the Athenian plain between Mt. Parnes, Mt. Pendeli, and the ships in the bay off Phaleron. A haze hung over the city, with the Acropolis and Mt. Lycabettus rising above the morning mist. At the base of Lycabettus lay the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Young's Greek workmen grabbed their tools and headed to the trenches. They believed in the value of archaeology for their country. Greece was a young nation in spite of the antiquity of its civilization and had grounded its modern identity in its ancient past. Metaxas promoted archaeology as a "patriotic duty" and a bridge between that glorious era and the troubled present. He staged youth rallies using ancient temples as backdrops and sent antiquities, fundamental to the country's image, as "ambassadors of the nation" to the 1939 New York World's Fair. After all, Greece's classical pedigree helped legitimize the century-old nation-state.

For a fortnight, Young's men had been digging from dawn to dusk on the broad back of the mountain. Around a stone altar and in dumps from earlier excavations, they had found pottery painted with intricate geometric patterns and with incised Greek letters spelling out an early form of Zeus and confirming an ancient account of the mountain's altars to the father of the gods. Some workmen descended into a cavish cleft. Penned in, they could see only the soft black earth through which they dug, the walls of the cleft, and the sky. Soon baskets brimmed with fragments of ancient drinking cups and jugs left by thirsty farmers who prayed for rain and looked to clouds clustering on Mt. Hymettus as a sign. Urgently, they gathered bones in the ashy earth from animals sacrificed to win the god's favor. The clang of trowels pierced the thrum of the diggers' banter and the peaceful tinkling of goat bells in the distance.

The men had left the American School on foot at six that morning, but when they were about halfway to the monastery of Kaiseriani on the lower slope of Mt. Hymettus, sirens had started to wail. Perhaps Young considered it a false alarm. In any case, he did not take it seriously. His work came first. Ignoring the noise, the men trudged on.

Since Metaxas had declared martial law with the approval of Greece's King George II on August 4, 1936, the dictator had abolished the parliament, banned political parties, and made himself the sole ruler of Greece. Then he purged the government and armed forces. Republicans had lost their jobs and fled into exile to escape imprisonment, and the traditional wrangling between them and the royalists had festered underground. Not all Greeks approved of their government. But over time, Metaxas repealed martial law and led the fractious country reasonably well, while retaining absolute power.

Would Metaxas sidle up to Hitler or cast his lot with the British? Over the years, Metaxas had cultivated friendly relations with his fellow fascist dictators, modeled his repressive regime on Mussolini's, and made Greece economically dependent on Nazi Germany. His royalist cabinet included some of Greece's leading Germanophiles, who were avowed fascists. Rumors circulated that "fifth columnists," a clandestine wave of Germans or German sympathizers working as advisors, middle managers, and nannies, had poured into Athens, infiltrated important households and industries, channeled Nazi propaganda into Greece, and forwarded information about Greece back to Berlin. No one could predict what the dictator would do, and what Metaxas decided now would determine the fate of Greece.

The men did not have to wait long for the answer. Late-arriving youths had joined Young at the monastery. They brought bad news. Special newspapers announced that at three in the morning the Italian ambassador had handed Metaxas an ultimatum. It demanded authorization for Italian troops to occupy unspecified strategic points in Greek territory. To this call for Greek surrender, Metaxas had shouted "Okhi!" ("No!"). Greece was at war with Italy.

Young was not surprised at the Italian outrage. For a year, he had distrusted the Italians—ever since Good Friday, April 7, 1939, when they had invaded Albania. At that time, everyone worried that the Italians would press south into Greece. To stop them, Britain and France had declared that they would support Greece if it were attacked, and the British fleet had showed the flag at the Greek island of Corfu, just seventy miles from Italy and three from Albania. Mussolini backed off, but Metaxas kept a watchful eye on the Italian troops near Greece's northwestern border.

Nevertheless, a year later Young dug as usual. On October 28, 1940, knowing the country was at war and not registering the gravity of the situation, Young went up to the site anyway. Young was arrogant. Since he had already come so far, he might as well get on with it. The show must go on. Not knowing when he would return, Young wanted to finish his work and bring down his tools and artifacts, which he hoped would date to the age of Homer.

About half an hour after he began,Young heard a strange droning. From the northwest, Italian planes roared toward Athens, approaching Mt. Parnes on the far side of the city and dropping bombs that ignited the parched oak groves flanking the airfield protecting the king's summer palace. Pluming flames shot skyward, and a halo of fire soon crowned the slopes where lightning flashes once signaled the need to send offerings to Delphi. Other bombs fell by the sea, and staccato antiaircraft guns flashed and barked from the hills of Athens as Greek planes rose to engage the enemy. The men had a grandstand seat and were momentarily transfixed by the spectacle. Within minutes, the planes were gone. Although they were exposed in a military zone within spitting distance of Athens, Young still did not call it a day, so the workmen tidied their trenches and packed their finds. Around two in the afternoon, the bombers returned and pounded the naval base at Salamis, causing smoke to silhouette the Acropolis. Then, like a bull, Young stomped the ground and bellowed that it was time to go.

From the mountain's bald summit, the encumbered men began the one-and-a-half-hour trek back to the city, lumbering along the scrubby shoulder, crushing thyme and terebinth underfoot. After forty-five minutes of slogging, they descended into a copse of cypress and sweet-scented pines fed by a sacred spring above Kaiseriani. Pressing on, they passed through the suburbs, where they learned that Metaxas had again declared martial law, this time ordering a general mobilization and exhorting his people:

Greece is not fighting for victory. She is fighting for glory and for honor. She has a debt to herself to remain worthy of her history.... There are times in which a nation, if it wishes to remain great, gains by being able to fight, even if it has no hopes of victory.... The moment has come for us to fight for the independence, the integrity and the honor of Greece.... We shall now show whether we are really worthy of our ancestors and of the freedom won for us by our forefathers. Let the entire nation rise as one man. Fight for your country, your wives, your children, and our sacred traditions. The struggle for all has begun.

Stirred by these words, the crew hiked the rest of the way to Athens, where they learned that enemy planes had bombed Eleusis and Corinth and killed civilians at a market in the city of Patras. Church bells clanged, and the ceremonial cannons of Mt. Lycabettus boomed. The government declared a state of siege and called up thousands of reserve firemen and police. Athenians filled the streets. Schools had closed, and children ogled the skies hoping to see enemy aircraft. Older girls volunteered as Red Cross nurses, while older boys rushed to their regiments shouting, "We will throw them into the sea!" Paramilitary youths distributed handbills and pasted war posters on walls. Men who had been summoned for military duty hurried to their mustering stations. At every street corner, Young's workers read the conscription notices and scattered to enlist at their own mobilization points.

Young soldiered on alone through the crowds, his ears ringing with the news, "Eenai polemos, eenai polemos!" ("It's war; it's war!"). When he reached Vasilissis (Queen) Sophia Avenue at Evangelismos Hospital, Young found pandemonium. Police blocked his normal route and demanded to see Young's papers for Metaxas had barred aliens from the center of town between Mt. Lycabettus, the Acropolis, and Omonia Square. When they saw that Young was an American, they let him pass and bawled "Zeeto Ameriki!" ("Long live America!"). Their enthusiasm was contagious, and the normally reticent archaeologist yelled back "Zeeto Ellas!" ("Long live Greece!"). An irrational euphoria took hold of the Greeks. Athens erupted and roared with delight. A sea of people carried pictures of the king and Metaxas. Waving American, British, and Turkish flags, they undulated by the respective legations and surged down to Syntagma Square, cheered by screeching crones and women with bawling babies. Elsewhere a procession of people wielding flags, makeshift signs, and banners poured down Panepistimiou (University Street), where students who had not yet enlisted begged their professors to let them volunteer. Streets rang with the din of regiments marching. Conscripts in khaki uniforms and civilian clothes sang the national anthem, and the applauding throng screamed "Zeeto Ellas!" Bystanders rushed in and heaved soldiers onto their shoulders shrieking, "Death to the macaroni eaters!" Athenians cheered the troops and guns as they rounded the corner by the elegant arcade of the Grande Bretagne Hotel and entered Syntagma Square. There the flows converged and swelled before the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the old palace, now the Greek Parliament building. There commandeered cars, trucks, taxicabs, and buses painted with "Athens-Tirana-Rome" paraded, packed with young men shouting and singing as they prepared to head north and defend the border. Everything on wheels was rolling to Albania.

Foreign journalists packed the bar of the King George Hotel at Syntagma, astonished by the unanimity among the Athenian politicians. Although some differed about the course Metaxas had chosen, all favored going to war. Instead of arguing along the usual royalist-republican lines, all supported Metaxas, who, with a single word, okhi, had united the country. The newsmen marveled at the Greeks' confidence in their ability to rebuff the Italians since, at that point in time, the Axis had won every major battle fought on European soil. Next door, the top brass of the Greek military streamed in and out of the Grande Bretagne, which they had taken over as Greek General Headquarters early that morning.

The Italians had invaded western Greece from their chief stronghold of Koritsa, Albania's second largest city, only twenty miles west of the Greek border. Their northern thrust targeted Salonika with the intention of cutting it off from Central Greece, while another penetrated from Albania's Adriatic shore to cut off the island of Corfu, seize the coast, and threaten the western Greek city of Yannina. Fortunately, the Greek army had already moved troops to block these traditional avenues of attack.

Young ascended the slopes of Mt. Lycabettus heading for the School. Not until seven that evening did he reach the walled compound that the Americans shared with the British. After unlatching the massive iron gates, he discovered on the front door a torn sheet of paper on which was penciled, "Notice. The American Legation has telephoned that Americans should not go into town until further notice. G. P. Stevens, 8 A.M. October 28, 1940." Gorham Stevens, the School's director, had already cabled the School's managing committee in the states, reporting, "Since 7 o'clock this morning there has been a state of war between Greece and Italy." Then he closed the School.

The academic enclave that Young called home had housed Yankee excavators for over half a century. Young had first come eleven years ago, fresh from Princeton, eager to be trained on the School's excavations. Now he climbed to the top floor of the main building, where his room opened onto a roof terrace. Down below, the lush garden hummed with British archaeologists and classicists. In the distance, Mt. Hymettus glowed purple-blue, dominating the horizon as the city's ecstasy resounded. No one slept that night. Everyone was in the streets, blaring horns, climbing lampposts, brandishing flags, and screeching themselves hoarse.

In the dark, Young must have considered his options. Up to this point, he had not been particularly patriotic nor much concerned with politics. Rather he had played the game, dutifully following his father to Princeton and continuing his studies in graduate school, the cursus honorum or prescribed path to academic achievement. Nothing suggested that he would step out of that line.

How had Young come to this moment when everything changed? Since 1933, he had dug in the ancient Agora (marketplace) at the foot of the Athenian Acropolis. As the civic center of the ancient city, it had great symbolic value to the Greeks. Being the cradle of democracy, the site also conferred cultural capital on the nation that excavated it. The United States, as the preeminent twentieth-century democracy with a history of romantic philhellenism, was heavily invested in the excavations, financially and ideologically. They were sponsored by the School, funded by John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and directed by T. Leslie Shear of Princeton. At the Agora, Young and his colleagues had found buildings, inscriptions, and pottery showing that the area had been used for millennia, but they privileged the time of democratic Athens' golden age, the fifth century BC. This was good copy, and the New York Times ran several features on the American work there.

Block by block, they had labored, building an edifice of American scholarship on Greek soil. Young's Princeton roommate, Eugene Vanderpool, along with Virginia Grace, Arthur Parsons, and Margaret Crosby, supervised trenches. Epigraphers Benjamin Meritt, Sterling Dow, and James Oliver deciphered ancient inscriptions, while registrar Lucy Talcott organized and catalogued the finds and Alison Frantz photographed them. They had all been well trained, at Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Bryn Mawr, Radcliffe, and Smith, and, over time, cohered into a tight band of friends who counted on each other to get the job done.

The excavators took responsibility not only for the scientific, but also the more mundane practical aspects of the work, such as removing the remains of modern houses, vast quantities of earth, and large blocks of stone and marble in order to reach the ancient ruins. To reconstruct the site, they had to be efficient and observant, scrutinizing their trenches, updating field notebooks daily, and synthesizing the results in weekly reports. Each reported to Shear and, with the help of a single foreman, supervised, inspired, and ran herd on gangs of ten to fifty Greek workmen, who performed the physical labor and whom they treated paternalistically, referring to them as their "boys." All the while, the archaeologists sank deep roots into the land of Greece.

(Continues...)

---

Excerpted from Classical Spies by Susan Heuck Allen Copyright © 2011 by University of Michigan . Excerpted by permission of THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

---