Professor Harry C. Avery donated his collection of Attic squeezes to our Center in 2017. He asked that we recognize his late father-in-law, William F. McDonald, a long-time Professor of Ancient History here at Ohio State, in our name of the collection. Our Avery-McDonald Collection contains many very fine squeezes, scans of which can be viewed in our Collections catalog. Those of us in the Center are grateful for his donation and that we can preserve his scholarly legacy in this way.

Below is a message from Professor Mark L. Lawall, Chair of the Managing Committee of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing with the sad news that Harry C. Avery died on June 9, 2023 in Pittsburgh. Harry was a longtime member of the Managing Committee, representing the University of Pittsburgh since 1968. 

After military service between the Second World War and the Korean War, Harry enrolled in the University of Pittsburgh where he earned his BA in Classics, and this was followed by a Fulbright grant to Greece, which he held at the American School in the 1953-1954 academic year. He went on to earn an M.A. in Classics at the University of Illinois, and that was followed by his 1960 Princeton Ph.D., “Prosopographical Studies in the Oligarchy of the Four Hundred.” After short stints teaching at the University of Texas and Bryn Mawr College, Harry returned to Pittsburgh where he remained until his retirement in 2015. He returned to Athens as ‘annual professor’ in 1971-72 and offered a seminar on Herodotos.

His research ranged widely over Greek tragedy and fifth-century Greek history hitting both the widely addressed (Thucydides on the Sicilian Expedition and the reporting on the Persian casualties at Marathon) to the more esoteric (Sophocles’ political career and Agamemnon as a father figure for Achilles). Perhaps from the influence of the students and fellow scholars at the School in 1971-72, much of Harry’s work throughout the 1970s focused on matters of Herodotos, Thucydides, and historical issues of the 5th century B.C. More often, though, his research interests defied easy categorization with works on Caesar and Marius alongside Homer, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Lysias. 

Not long ago, Harry and his wife, JoAnn (McDonald) Avery, donated their collection of squeezes of Attic inscriptions to The Ohio State University’s collection. Thus, not only through his research and the wisdom he imparted to students over decades in the classroom but also through this very tangible legacy, Harry Avery’s love of Classical Studies and appreciation of the carefully chosen words of ancient writers will be long remembered.

I offer heartfelt sympathies to his family, to his countless students who passed through the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning over the years, and to his friends and colleagues.

Sincerely,
Mark
—
Prof. Mark L. Lawall
Chair, Managing Committee
American School of Classical Studies at Athens