Through Archaeology, Diplomacy, She Brought America and Greece Together

Princeton Portrait: Mary Alison Frantz (1903-1995)

Illustration: Daniel Hertzberg

By Harrison Blackman ’17

Published July 2, 2024

3 min read

In 1984, at the age of 81, Mary Alison Frantz paid her last visit to the ancient site of Delphi, Greece. There, the scholar admired the ruins she had spent her life documenting as a photographer and archaeologist. “I went back to the sanctuary and this time climbed up to the stadium,” she wrote. “I felt my age as I reflected, going up the (relatively) easy path, how I once went up the rougher and steeper one.”

Frantz was accustomed to taking the more difficult path, whether as a photographer of ancient ruins or as a trailblazing woman in the male-dominated fields of archaeology, diplomacy, and espionage. From understanding Greece’s past to its contemporary political intrigues, Frantz was a key figure in bringing Greece and America together. Her career began and ended in Princeton.

Born in 1903 in Minnesota, Frantz was homeschooled by her mother after her father, a newspaper publisher, died of pneumonia. After majoring in classics at Smith College and a fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, Frantz moved to Princeton in 1927, where she joined the University staff of what is now known as the Index of Medieval Art.

To photograph a 2,400-year-old lion sculpture on the Parthenon, she took advantage of the morning light and scaled its ancient walls.

Two years later, Frantz moved to Athens and joined the American School of Classical Studies. In 1934, she became part of the Athenian Agora excavations supervised by Princeton archaeologist T. Leslie Shear Sr., a project that helped archaeologists understand the Athens of Socrates, and created an archaeological park now visited annually by half a million people. In 1937, she completed her doctorate in Byzantine art from Columbia, and in 1939, she became the official photographer of the Agora excavations, a position she held for 25 years.

Frantz’s photographic tactics were both calculated and daring. To photograph a 2,400-year-old lion sculpture on the Parthenon, she took advantage of the morning light and scaled its ancient walls. “The only way up was by climbing the broken end of the south interior wall,” Frantz wrote, adding, “thereafter inching down to the corner and crawling along the top of the colonnade to the point chosen for the photograph.”

According to art historians Amy Papalexandrou *98 and Marie Mauzy, Frantz’s methods achieved a “somewhat unconventional combination of scientific intent with aesthetically pleasing results.”

In 1939, Frantz’s work took on an urgent dimension. Yale archaeologist Carl Blegen arrived in Athens with 600 clay tablets inscribed with Linear B, an undeciphered Bronze Age script. Worried about the escalation of World War II, Blegen planned to deposit the tablets in the Bank of Greece, but he wanted the artifacts photographed first. In just two days, Frantz photographed them all. According to archaeologist James McCredie, the images assisted the efforts of Michael Ventris, a British architect who deciphered the language a decade later, proving that Linear B was a form of ancient Greek.

Frantz fled Greece before Germany invaded in 1941. She was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), precursor of the CIA, working as an analyst in the Washington, D.C. office, where she monitored the activities of Greek political exiles and their goals for the country upon liberation. In 1971, Frantz explained, “We had all kinds of ways of contacts with people, just to learn what they had in mind and what they were preparing.”

After the war, Frantz returned to Athens as the cultural attaché to the American embassy, where she was a founder of the Fulbright Program in Greece. The program has led to more than 75 years of Greek and American cultural exchange.

In 1976, she joined the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton as a research fellow and completed a book on the Athenian Agora’s late antique period. In 1984, when she made her final visit to Delphi, she reflected on her life’s work in the ancient stadium, writing, “It was perhaps appropriate that I sat for a time in the seats near the finish line.”

Published in the July 2024 Issue

Princeton Portrait History

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Peter Rupert Lighte *81

3 Months Ago

Alison’s Cat Sitter

In the 1970s, I was spending a summer in Princeton to work on my dissertation, but the prospect of dorm living was resistible. I put the word out amongst friends, hoping that an opportunity would present itself. In short order, I heard back from a pal who was the grooms-woman to Mrs. Grace Lambert’s (the widow of Gerard Lambert of Listerine fame) horses: a cat sitter was urgently needed for the summer to take up duties the very next day. An eminent archaeologist — Alison Frantz — was unexpectedly called off to Greece, and Tamino, her Manx, needed to be looked after.

I dutifully presented myself at the appointed time in front of a curious cinderblock house near the Institute. But before I could even ring the doorbell, a stern woman emerged from the house, approached me — suitcase in hand (I was too intimidated even to offer assistance) — extended her hand, not to shake mine, but to drop her house keys in mine — and commanded, “If the house burns down, save the cat.” That was the beginning of my lifelong friendship with the redoubtable Alison, despite being duty bound to feed Tamino fresh prawns and kidneys each dawn.

Upon her return from Greece, I became her frequent guest, grateful that Tamino couldn’t speak! The delight of my visits with Alison became inseparable from my respect for her house full of surprises. It reminded me of a lady’s raincoat, with a lining of fur; but the cinderblock house was warmed by brick and wood.

My career took me abroad for almost three decades. While posted to Tokyo, I received a phone call out of the blue from a Princeton estate agent; she had gotten my name from a fellow grad student who was my elder and had retired from the Far East to Princeton. She wondered aloud if I might be interested in such a path, as well. Since my international career was hardly over, I told her that Princeton was not in my future. She asked that I humor her and describe the kind of house which might take my fancy. Without hesitation, I volunteered Alison’s address who had since passed away. Though struck by my specificity, the agent seemed to get my measure and began sending me faxes of quirky Princeton houses. Though appealing, they did not signify.

After having then moved on London with my family, I received a call one night from the agent informing me that Alison’s house was for sale. As it happened, I was bound for New York the very next day. I agreed to come down to Princeton and visit the house. On the appointed day, we met up and I was still so taken with its memory that I paid no mind to its shortcomings wrought by time. I vowed to bring my family down at Christmas which was fast approaching. Then, when we did all visit, my husband’s comment, upon pulling up to the house, did not bode well: “I’m not quite sure I’m ready to be buried down a little country lane.” But one daughter decided she’d like a horse in the guest house and another claimed Alison’s dark room as her very own bedroom. Upon our departure, the naysayer pointed to a spot in the sitting room, declaring it just the right spot for a piano!

Tamino, long gone, was followed by Fuqi, our pooch from Beijing. Sadly they are now both buried in Alison’s garden; and in my study is a copy of her favorite photograph of a cat in a fig tree taken in Greece which she had given me when I received my doctorate. Our family has grown up in this house, but I still feel grateful to be sharing it with the eminent and dear M. Alison Frantz.