Professor Homer Armstrong Thompson, MA, PhD

Homer Thompson was born in Devlin, Ontario, on 7 September 1906, the son of a farmer. As a boy, he had to help on the farm and got up at five o’clock every morning to do his share of the chores before walking more than two miles to school. Education was important in the family (his father had taught himself Latin and Greek) and at the age of fifteen Thompson began to study at the University of British Columbia. In 1927 he received the first Master’s degree awarded by the Department of Classics and went on to the University of Michigan, where he earned a doctorate two years later. That year, 1929, saw Thompson’s arrival in Athens to collaborate in the excavation of the Pnyx. At the age of twenty-four, and with no experience in the field, Thompson was responsible for daily supervision and record-keeping and, with Konstantine Kourouniotes, for the final report, ‘The Pnyx in Athens’, published in the first issue of Hesperia in 1932. He went on to dig at the monument of Philopappos and to investigate the course of the city wall. In 1931, his former tutor at Michigan recommended him to the American School of Classical Studies. Thereafter, for almost four decades, interrupted only by the war (in which he served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Canadian Navy), Thompson was involved in the systematic exploration of the Agora, the civic centre of ancient Athens, the location of which was only vaguely known from sporadic excavation by Greek and German scholars before the American School initiated its ambitious project, generously supported by John D Rockefeller Jnr. Over the years Thompson examined thousands of artefacts and pinpointed the site of ancient monuments. The deep accumulation of earth over the ancient ground level proved to be impregnated with antiquities brought up through the ages by the digging of foundation trenches, wells and cesspools so that all excavation had to be done with pick and shovel under close supervision. The digging season lasted for four or five months in the spring and early summer, the rest of the year being spent by some of the participants in processing and studying finds in the pleasant nineteenth-century house in Observatory Street which was the project’s headquarters until 1957.

Thompson served as acting Field Director from 1945 to 1947 and for the next twenty years, until 1967, as Field Director, thereafter as Director Emeritus, advising, encouraging and chivvying the participants into preparing reports for publication. He oversaw the creation of the Agora archaeological park, the reconstruction of the Stoa of Attalos -- not only as a museum but also as an interpretative display of the native flora of the country -- and produced several editions of the guide to the site and museum. Finally, in 1972, jointly with R E Wycherley, Thompson himself wrote volume XIV of The Athenian Agora entitled The Agora of Athens: the history, shape and uses of an ancient city centre.

For some years, at least, Thompson managed to combine work in Athens with teaching and administration back home. From 1933 to 1947 he taught in the Department of Art and Archaeology of the University of Toronto and was also Assistant Curator of the classical collection of the Royal Ontario Museum. His appointment to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton in 1947 freed him from teaching, enabling him to concentrate full time on the Agora project, though his door was always open to students and scholars of every nationality with whom he loved to have a good-humoured argument. In Athens, he was always ready to give guided tours of the site, pointing out new finds and testing fresh interpretations on colleagues from other countries. Thompson received many honorary degrees and honours, including the Gold Medal of the Archaeological Institute of America. Greece recognized his unique contribution by election to the Academy and appointment as Commander of the Order of the Phoenix. Thompson died on 7 May 2000.