Fifty Years of Sathers: The Sather Professorship of Classical Literature in the University of California Berkeley 1913/4 - 1963/4

By Sterling Dow

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1965.
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Release date: Dec 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9780520329935

Sterling Dow

Enter the Author Bio(s) here.

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FIFTY YEARS OF SATHERS

MRS. JANE KROM (READ) SATHER

FIFTY YEARS

OF

SATHERS

THE SATHER PROFESSORSHIP OF

CLASSICAL LITERATURE

IN THE

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

BERKELEY

1913/4—1963/4

BY STERLING DOW

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

BERKELEY AND LOS ANGELES

1965

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

London, England

© 1965 by The Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Card Catalog Number 65-17449

Printed in the United States of America

Designed by Adrian Wilson

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

THE FOUNDING

THE EARLY SATHERS

THE EARLY SATHERS

THE RE-FOUNDATION

THE PRINTED VOLUMES

THE PROFESSORS AND THE VOLUMES

STANDARDS AND THEIR CONSEQUENCES

FIELDS COVERED

THE SATHERSAS LECTURES

THE BEST SATHERS

BEST OF THE BEST

NOTES

INTRODUCTORY NOTES

Acknowledgments

Sources

Portraits

Pronunciation

Table Of Presidents

THE FOUNDING. I. Wheeler and Jane K. Sather

NOTES

Peder and]ane K. Sather

Jane K. Sathers Bequests

The Sather Gate

The Campanile

The Bells

The Sather Professorship of History

Other Classical and Humane Lecture Series Elsewhere

THE EARLY SATHERS-J.LMyres

NOTES

The First Sather

The Early Years, 1914/5— 1919/20

THE RE-FOUNDATION: I.M.Linforthand

NOTES

The Year of Change

THE PROFESSORS AND THE VOLUMES

NOTES

The Origin of "TheMycenaean Origin*

The Press

SPECIAL NOTES ON VARIOUS ASPECTS ADMINISTRATIVE

Early Salańes

The $1250 Withheld

Years of Appointments

Sather Lectures, Special Series Not by Sather Professors

SELECTION OF SATHER PROFESSORS

Sphere of the Sather Professors

Greek vs. Latin

Restrictions

Practical Difficulties

Countries and Universities

Vital Statistics

The Problem of Choice

LECTURES

The Number of Lectures

Day and Hour

THE SATHER VOLUMES

Administration

Printings

Lengths

Literary Flavor

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SATHER PROFESSORS

Years, Names, Data On Sather Volumes

PLATES

INDEX

THE FOUNDING

FIFTY YEARS AGO Jane K. Sather created at Berkeley a gate, a bell tower, and two professorships. The gate dominates part of the campus, the bell tower dominates the whole campus. One of the professorships has become the most honorific of all annual Classical professorships anywhere in the world.

Mrs. Sather did not achieve these results overnight, or without help. She began in 1900, at the age of 76. Peder Sather, her second and wealthier husband, had died 14 years earlier. Already well-off when he came to California in 1850, Peder Sather was a banker. Jane put his name and dates, 1810-1886, opposite her own name on the Gate. Presumably the fortune of which she disposed was his.

In making her dispositions, she had the help of a very able and remarkable person, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, who in 1899 had come from Cornell to be President of the University. Himself a teacher of linguistics and a notable historian of Classical Greece, Wheeler had worked fast. In one year he had induced the widow to give an amount adequate for a Classical professorship, and he had guided her in making certain lesser gifts as well. The property was to be held by him, and the income was to go to her, throughout her life; then it was to go to the University. Wheeler was named executor of her will, and when the time came, he served without fee. It was a generous arrangement on both sides. The Gate bore the two names of Peder and Jane K.; and both Professorships (a second, in History, was created by the final will, again no doubt as advised by Wheeler) were named for Jane K. Sather alone. But although eventually the cornerstone bore her name, in daily popular usage the tremendous bell tower is not called the Sather Campanile, but just the Campanile; the Sather Gate was enough. On the other hand, the estate itself was of ample size to build and to endow, in all over $526,000.

The visions that came to realization through the will were excellent. Attached to fine works of scholarship, Jane K. Sather’s name has become known all over the scholarly world. For the University and for the state, as well as for herself, she could hardly have done better.

When she made her decisions, the University she chose was not yet fifty years old, its future (so to speak) was still ahead of it, and it could hardly then be counted among the few really great universities of the world. Those who are familiar with the present enormous University, which has limited its enrollment to 27,500 (not to mention eight other campuses, all large), will find it hard to believe that fifty years ago, in 1914/5, the year after the first Sather, the total enrollment was only 5848.

But from the start, one circumstance was favorable. By a happy omen the University is situated in the only university town anywhere named for a philosopher; and Bishop Berkeley the great idealist, himself an earnest promoter of learning in the New World, would surely have commended Jane Sather.

Her Campanile, finished in white stone, was modelled on the one in the Piazza San Marco, Venice. The tower looks its best, I think, when seen from fairly close beneath, in the midst of its generous patio, and on the grand main axis of the Campus. To the west, the whole slope is downward, and the axis of

THE FOUNDING

the tower and of the entire Campus is pointed straight at the Golden Gate many miles away, a vista the like of which no other university campus anywhere can command. But the best thing about the bell tower is surely the bells. At eight in the morning, twelve noon, and again at six in the evening, when the clock has finished striking, musicians play the chimes. I always try to leave the office in Dwindle just at six, so as to cross the campus when the evening air is full of notes rebounding from the marble walls of the buildings, rolling over the wide lawns, and filling the cool green walks under the trees.