necrology
Alexander Cambitoglou, 1922–2019
John K. Papadopoulos
Open Access on AJA Online
American Journal of Archaeology
Volume 124, Number 4
October 2020
Pages 695–98
DOI: 10.3764/aja.124.4.0695
www.ajaonline.org
Alexander Eleutherios Cambitoglou died on Friday, 29 November 2019, in
Sydney, Australia, from natural causes. He was born 15 February 1922 in
Thessaloniki to Antonios and Eleni Cambitoglou, almost a century earlier
and in another world, some seven months before the Asia Minor crisis that
irrevocably changed the demography and landscape of the Aegean. With his
passing, classical archaeology has lost one of its finest exponents—an active
excavator, a sensitive connoisseur and curator of ancient art, a fine teacher
and mentor, an academician in two countries, and a visionary administrator.
The family was from Veroia in Macedonia, his father ran a thriving fur and
leather business, with property in Thessaloniki that included a hotel and
a commercial stoa that bore the family name, and they would spend summers in Pelion. More importantly, the family held in high esteem the study
of the classics, languages, and music. The family also had its fair share of
tragedies: Alexander’s oldest brother, Minos, was killed in the early years of
World War II on the Albanian frontier, which spared Alexander from active
military service during the war (he completed his military service in 1950).
He was the youngest of four children (his elder siblings being Minos, Jason,
and Hero).
Alexander was tutored in French (his first and favorite European language),
German, English, and Italian, and in theology, while learning ancient Greek
and Latin at the classical gymnasium, before attending the University of Thessaloniki. His knowledge of European languages and literatures, as well as the
classical languages, was well known (his English was impeccable, and he deplored split infinitives and the use of the possessive for inanimate objects),
and he was exceedingly well read. It was he who introduced me to, among
others, Marcel Proust and Gustave Flaubert. One of the very few times I was
able to take Alexander out for dinner—he was very generous in feeding his
students and would never let us pay—was at an Italian (Sicilian) eatery I frequented in Sydney, where I practiced my own poor Italian. While serving us,
the waiter was glad to see Italian customers, to which Alexander responded,
with that characteristic glint in his eye: “I am the only Italian here!”
Alexander Cambitoglou obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Thessaloniki in 1946, before moving to Great Britain for graduate work
with a British Council scholarship. He studied with some of the luminaries
of 20th-century classical archaeology, obtaining a master of arts degree from
the University of Manchester (1948), where he studied with the great Tom
Webster (while there he also had a private tutorial on Protogeometric pottery with Vincent Desborough); he followed Webster to University College,
London, where he completed his first doctorate in 1950 under Webster and
Martin Robertson. He earned his second doctorate at Oxford in 1958, where
he was among the last students of John Davidson Beazley (with two Ph.D.
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degrees, he was at least once referred to in German as
Herr Doctor Doctor). His primary passion was Greek
painted pottery, especially South Italian red-figure pottery, and it was this that led to his long collaboration
with Arthur Dale Trendall, whom he first met in London in 1951. Raised in a cosmopolitan Thessaloniki,
surrounded by Greek and Jewish elders and peers, with
his learning and etiquette honed in England, Alexander
was the quintessential European gentleman, urbane
and always well dressed.
With doctorate in hand, he came to the United
States and held his first two teaching positions here.
From 1954 to 1956 he served as Assistant Professor
at the University of Mississippi, where he taught with
David Moore Robinson, before the death of the latter
in 1958. He then moved to Bryn Mawr College, where
he taught with, among others, Brunilde Sismondo
Ridgway and Machteld Mellink, between 1956 and
1961 (he received his Oxford D.Phil. degree in 1958
while on the faculty of Bryn Mawr). Wishing to thank
his hosts and colleagues at Ole Miss before his move
to Pennsylvania, Alexander hosted a dinner party, for
which he drove over various county lines in search of
wine and Campari. Having acquired a bottle of the
aperitif with great difficulty, together with several
bottles of wine, he welcomed his guests, only to learn
that their drink of choice at dinner was coffee. His
time in the United States was both rewarding and difficult, especially in the south during the Jim Crow era.
He often described the United States of the period as
a “cultural desert, but with some magnificent oases.”
In 1961, at Trendall’s urging, Alexander joined the
faculty of the University of Sydney as a Senior Lecturer in Archaeology, and in 1963 he was appointed
Professor of Classical Archaeology, becoming the first
person of Greek origin to be appointed professor in
Australia. That same year, he was also appointed Curator of the Nicholson Museum. He fell in love with
Australia and in time acquired Australian citizenship.
It was also in Sydney in 1962 that he met the person
who became his life-long companion, Dr. John Atherton Young (1936–2004). John went on to become
Professor of Physiology at the University of Sydney,
Dean of the Faculty of Medicine, and Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University. Alexander and John lived
together until John’s untimely death in 2004. Their
relationship was always discreet, and Alexander deeply
mourned John’s passing. Generous patrons of the arts,
they were regular subscribers to the Australian Opera
[aja 124
Alexander Cambitoglou at his desk at Torone in 1985
(R. Scannell; courtesy Australian Archaeological Institute at
Athens).
at the Sydney Opera House (the first opera performance I ever attended was as a guest of Alexander
and John).
Drawing on his experience at Bryn Mawr, Alexander
helped shape the Department of Archaeology in Sydney into one of Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology, and from 1970, he alternated as head of the
department with John Basil Hennessy, the Edwin
Cuthbert Hall Professor of Near Eastern Archaeology. In 1978, Alexander was appointed as the inaugural Arthur and Renee George Professor of Classical
Archaeology, an endowed chair he helped establish.
In an era of mandatory retirement, he was forced to
retire in 1989, but he continued as Curator of the
Nicholson Museum until 2000. For many of us born
in Australia, our first introduction to Egyptian, Near
Eastern, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman material culture
and art was at the Nicholson Museum, and Alexander
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Alexander Cambitoglou, 1922–2019
was instrumental in making the museum what it is
today. During his time at the University of Sydney,
Alexander was a veritable dynamo, mobilizing the
Greek-Australian community and many Antipodean
philhellenes. He had an uncanny ability to charm the
bird from the tree, working quietly and effectively,
often behind the scenes, and always with those people
who mattered the most in achieving the task at hand.
He befriended senior university officials, ambassadors
and consuls-general of Greece and Australia, as well as
governors-general of his adopted homeland. He was a
consummate and dedicated administrator.
Archaeological exploration was also at the heart of
Alexander’s endeavors (while in the United States,
he met George E. Mylonas, from whom he learned a
great deal; he excavated with Mylonas at Eleusis, where
he met other budding directors of future archaeological projects, not least T. Leslie Shear, Jr.). In 1967,
Alexander initiated the excavations at the Geometric
settlement of Zagora on the island of Andros as a collaboration of the Athens Archaeological Society, of
which he was a long-time fellow, and the University of
Sydney. In 1975, he moved to the north Aegean, initiating the excavations at Torone in Chalkidike, a project
that continued into the mid 1990s. More importantly,
in 1980, he established the Australian Archaeological
Institute at Athens (AAIA), which quickly became
Australia’s major research facility in Greece, a center
promoting Greek and Mediterranean studies, with
a focus on archaeological fieldwork and research. It
cannot be emphasized enough that without Alexander there would have been no AAIA, and from 1980
onward he worked tirelessly to promote the institute.
He was not only the founding director of the AAIA,
he stayed on as director well into his 90s, until 2016.
Both Alexander and John Young gave and bequeathed
substantial portions of their own personal fortunes to
the institute.
In addition to publishing two volumes on the excavations at Zagora, and coediting the three-volume
Torone I, which appeared in 2001, Alexander was
primarily known for his work on Greek painted pottery, especially the red-figure pottery of the Greek
colonies of South Italy. To this end, he collaborated
for more than 40 years with Dale Trendall, with
whom he published numerous volumes (their first coauthored volume, Apulian Red-Figured Vase-Painters of
the Plain Style, was published in 1961 by the Archaeological Institute of America). They both traveled all
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over Europe, the Americas, and beyond in search of,
especially in the case of Alexander, Apulian red-figure
pottery. Alexander also spent several weeks in the
former U.S.S.R. studying Greek vases, and was given
nightly tickets to the Bolshoi Ballet during his time
there, which he much cherished. As collaborators,
Dale and Alexander worked well together, publishing
monographs that will remain for years to come seminal
and standard works of reference. Despite this, Alexander always regretted not devoting more time to their
collaboration, especially on account of his duties as
director of the AAIA. As collaborators, they were in
some ways an odd couple. Dale could not stand the
heat of Australian summers, whereas Alexander could
not abide the cold and often had a small space heater
at his feet, even during the warm weather in Sydney.
As for Dale, when the going got tough, he was known
to venture into the kitchen, open the refrigerator, and
poke his head inside for relief.
Alexander’s scholarly and administrative acumen
was well rewarded. In 1987—the year I completed
my Ph.D. degree with Alexander as my Doctorvater—
he was made Officer of the Order of Australia (AO)
for his contributions to archaeology and international
cultural relations in Australia. In 1991 he became the
fourth person in the history of the University of Sydney to receive the prestigious title of Doctor of the
University. (I still recall the over-the-top yellow silk
academic gown that Alexander wore with his usual
elegance for the ceremony.) In 1998, the Republic of
Greece made him Commander of the Order of the
Phoenix, and in 2003 he was awarded the Centenary
Medal for services to Australian society for his work
as an archaeologist. In 2015, he was awarded the Ayios
Kosmas o Aitolos Award for teaching excellence in
Hellenic Studies. He was a founding member of the
Council of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae
Classicae and a member of the International Scientific
Committee for the Corpus Speculorum Etruscorum.
In addition to being a Fellow of the Athens Archaeological Society, he was a Fellow of the Society of
Antiquaries, London, and a Corresponding Member of
the German Archaeological Institute. He was a Foundation Fellow of the Academy of the Humanities of
Australia (elected in 1968, serving as a member of the
Council, 1974–1976), and a Member of the Athens
Academy. In 1990, he was honored by his peers and
students with a Festschrift volume, edited by Jean-Paul
Descoeudres and entitled EYMOYΣIA: Ceramic and
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j.k. papadopoulos, alexander cambitoglou, 1922–2019
Iconographic Studies in Honour of Alexander Cambitoglou (MeditArch, Suppl. 1, Sydney).1 The list of contributors includes not only his students and colleagues
in Australia and New Zealand but also John Boardman,
Hélène Cassimatis, Jacques Chamay, Nicholas Coldstream, R.M. Cook, Paul Courbin, Gianna Dareggi,
Ettore De Juliis, Maurizio Harari, Ann Harnwell Ashmead, R. Ross Holloway, Spyridon Iakovidis, Lilly
Kahil, Eva Keuls, George Korres, Anneliese KossatzDeissmann, Donna Kurtz, Veronika MitsopoulouLeon, David Ridgway, Martin Robertson, Konrad
Schauenberg, Margot Schmidt, Erika Simon, J.G. Szilágyi, Michalis Tiverios, Cornelius Vermeule, Ioulia
Vokotopoulou, and Nikolaos Yalouris. And the Tabula
1
A full bibliography of Alexander’s academic publications
(1949–1989) was presented in the Festschrift volume (xx–
xxii), and an updated bibliography is provided by Descoeudres
in “Alexander Cambitoglou (15 February 1922–29 November
2019),” forthcoming in MeditArch 31, 2018 (2020).
Gratulatoria read like a Who’s Who of classical archaeology of the mid and later 20th century.
When all is said and done, Alexander Cambitoglou
was a civilized man living during some of the most uncivilized episodes of the 20th century: the Asia Minor
crisis, the rounding up and mass extermination of the
Jews of Thessaloniki by the Nazis, World War II and
the Greek Civil War that followed, not to mention his
time in the segregated South of the United States in the
mid 1950s. I will remember him most for his learning
and erudition, his elegance (the old adage for the Hollywood legend George Sanders—if you covered him in
garbage, he would still have style—could equally apply
to Alexander), and, above all, his humanity.
John K. Papadopoulos
Department of Classics
Cotsen Institute of Archaeology
University of California, Los Angeles
jkp@humnet.ucla.edu