Editing Edith Hamilton (section)

==Career==
===Educator===
Hamilton intended to remain in Munich, Germany, to earn a doctoral degree, but her plans changed after [[Martha Carey Thomas]], president of Bryn Mawr College, persuaded Hamilton to return to the United States. In 1896 Hamilton became head administrator of [[Bryn Mawr School]].<ref name=Weber43/> Founded in 1885 as a college preparatory school for girls in [[Baltimore]], [[Maryland]], Bryn Mawr School was the country's only private high school for women that prepared all of its students for collegiate coursework. The school's students were required to pass Bryn Mawr College's entrance exam as a requirement for graduation.<ref name=Jayes729/><ref name=Kort/>

Although Hamilton never completed her doctorate, she did become an "inspiring and respected head of the school"<ref name=Singer/> and was revered as an outstanding teacher of the classics, along with being an effective and successful administrator. She enhanced student life, maintained its high academic standards, and offered new ideas. Hamilton was unafraid to suggest new initiatives such as having her school's basketball team compete against another girls' team from a nearby boarding school. The proposed athletic competition was considered a scandalous suggestion for the time because news coverage would include the names of the participants. After Hamilton convinced the local press not to cover the event, the games proceeded and it became an annual tradition.<ref name=Weber38>Weber, p. 38.</ref><ref name=Jayes730>Jayes, p. 730.</ref>

In 1906, Hamilton's accomplishments as an educator and administrator were recognized when she was named the first headmistress in the school's history.<ref name=Jayes730/> Hamilton, who believed in providing students with a "rigorous" curriculum, successfully transitioned the girls school from its "mediocre beginnings into one of the foremost preparatory institutions in the country."<ref name=Weber44>Weber, p. 44.</ref> Her insistence on offering challenging standards to the students and different options on school policies led to confrontations with Dean Thomas. As Hamilton became increasingly frustrated with the situation at the school, her health also declined. She retired in 1922 at the age of fifty-four, after twenty-six years of service to the school.<ref name=Jayes730/><ref name=Weber44/><ref>Sicherman, ''Alice Hamilton, A Life in Letters'', pp. 252, 257.</ref>

===Classicist and author===
After retiring as an educator in 1922 and moving to New York City in 1924, Hamilton began a second career as an author of essays and best-selling books on ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.<ref name=NAW308>Sicherman and Green, ''Notable American Women'', p. 308.</ref> She had studied Greek and Latin from her youth and it remained her lifelong interest. "I came to the Greeks early," Hamilton told an interviewer when she was ninety-one, "and I found answers in them. Greece's great men let all their acts turn on the immortality of the soul. We don't really act as if we believed in the soul's immortality and that's why we are where we are today."<ref name=NYT/>

For more than fifty years her "love affair with Greece had smoldered without literary outlet".<ref name=NYT/> At the suggestion of [[Rosamund Gilder]], editor of ''[[Theatre Arts Magazine|Theater Arts Monthly]],'' Hamilton began by writing essays about [[Greek drama]] and comedies. Several of her early articles were published in ''Theater Arts Monthly'' before she began writing the series of books on ancient Greek and Roman life for which she is most noted. Hamilton went on to become America's most renowned [[classicist]] of her era.<ref name=Hallett150/>

According to her biographer, Barbara Sicherman, Hamilton's life was "ruled by a passionately nonconformist vision" that was also the source of her "strength and vitality" as well as her "appeal as public figure and author."<ref name=NAW308/> However, Hamilton was not, and did not claim to be, a scholar. She did not attempt to present excessive detailed facts from the past. Instead, Hamilton focused on readability and uncovering "truths of the spirit," which she found from ancient writers.<ref name=NAW308/> Drawing from Greek, Roman, Hebrew, and early Christian writings, Hamilton put into words what ancient people were like by concentrating on what they wrote about their own lives. Using the qualities and styles of the ancient writers, she emulated their directness, strived for perfection, and did not include footnotes.<ref name=Current/>

;''The Greek Way''
Hamilton was sixty-two when her first book, ''The Greek Way'', was published in 1930 and is considered by some as her most honored work.<ref name=Current>{{cite book|editor=Charles Moritz|title=Current Biography Yearbook, 1963 |publisher=H. W. Wilson Company |location=New York |year=1964|pages=175–77}}</ref> The successful book, which Hamilton wrote at the urging of Elling Annestad, an editor at [[W. W. Norton & Company|W. W. Norton Company]], made her a well-known author in the United States. The [[bestseller]] drew comparisons between ancient Greece and modern-day life with essays about some of the great figures of Athenian history and literature. Critically praised for its "vivid and graceful prose," the book brought Hamilton immediate acclaim and established her reputation as a scholar.<ref name=Kort/> Biographer [[Robert Kanigel]] states that "''The Greek Way'' renders the ancient Greek mind accessible to the modern reader. It serves up a delectable appetizer of Greek civilization that leaves you begging for the rest of the meal. It is a work of popularization of the highest order."<ref name=Kanigel>{{cite book |author=Robert Kanigel |title=Vintage Reading: From Plato to Bradbury |publisher=Bancroft Press |year=1998 |page=[https://archive.org/details/vintagereadingfr00robe/page/121 121] |isbn=978-0-9631246-7-8 |url=https://archive.org/details/vintagereadingfr00robe|url-access=registration }}</ref>

In Hamilton's view, Greek civilization at its peak represented a "flowering of the mind" that has yet to be equaled in the history of the world.<ref name=Sherman>{{cite journal| author=Thomas B. Sherman | title =Quality of Life in the Great Days of Greece | journal =St. Louis Post-Dispatch | date =November 28, 1948}} (book review)</ref> ''The Greek Way'' showed that the Greeks recognized and appreciated such things as love, athletic games, love of knowledge, fine arts, and intelligent conversation.<ref name=Sherman/> In "East and West," the first of the book's twelve chapters, Hamilton described the differences between the West and the  Eastern nations which preceded it. One book reviewer noted that the Greeks, which Hamilton considered the first Westerners, challenged Eastern ways that "remained the same throughout the ages, forever remote from all that is modern." Hamilton further suggested that the modern spirit of the West was "a Greek discovery, and the place of the Greeks is in the modern world."<ref name=Schilplin>{{cite journal| author=Maud Schilplin | title =''The Greek Way'' Reviewed | journal =Saint Cloud Times | page=6 | date =January 26, 1932}}</ref>

More recent writers have used Hamilton's observations in contrasting the civilizations and cultures of the East with that of the West. In comparing ancient Egypt with Greece, for instance, Hamilton's writing describes the unique geography, climate, agriculture, and government. Historian James Golden cites from ''The Greek Way'' that "Egyptian society was preoccupied with death." Its [[pharaohs]] erected giant monuments to themselves to impress future generations and its priests advised the slaves to "look forward to an afterlife."<ref name=Golden>{{cite book |author=James L. Golden|title=The Rhetoric of Western Thought|publisher=Kendall Hunt |year=2004|page=38 }}</ref> Golden used Hamilton's research to contrast these differences with the Greeks, especially the Athenians. Hamilton argued that individual "perfection of mind and body" dominated Greek thought and as a result, the Greeks "excelled at philosophy and sports" and that life "in all its exuberant potential" was the hallmark of Greek civilization.<ref name=Golden/>

;''The Roman Way''
''The Roman Way'' (1932), her second book, provided similar contrasts between ancient [[Rome]] and present-day life. It was also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in 1957.<ref name=Weber44/> Hamilton described life as it existed according to ancient Roman poets such as [[Plautus]], [[Virgil]] and [[Juvenal]], interpreted Roman thought and manners, and compared them to people's lives in the twentieth century. She also suggested how Roman ideas applied to the modern world.<ref name=Kort/><ref name=Current/>

Although her books were successful and popular among readers, she conceded "that it was hopeless to persuade Americans to be Greeks" and that "life had become far too complex since the age of [[Pericles]] to recapture the simple directness of Greek life&nbsp;... the calm lucidity of the Greek mind, which convinced the great thinkers of Athens of their mastery of truth and enlightenment."<ref name=NYT/>

;''The Prophets of Israel''
Her books later covered other areas of interest, especially from the Bible. In 1936, Hamilton wrote ''The Prophets of Israel'' (Norton, 1936), which interpreted the beliefs of the "spokesmen for God" in the Old Testament.<ref name=Kort/> With no knowledge of the Hebrew language, she relied on English language versions of the Bible to similarly compare the achievements and personal lives of the prophets with those of twentieth-century readers.<ref name=Current/> She concludes that the prophets were practical and their political views reflected their time, but their ideals were modern.<ref name=Hamilton1>{{cite journal| title =Israel's Men of Genius in Fine Survey | journal =Publishers Weekly | date =November 22, 1936}}</ref>

Hamilton also summarized the importance of that connection to people in modern times: "Love and grief and joy remain the same forever beautiful" and "poetic truth is always true" as are truths of the spirit. "The prophets understand them as no men have more, and in their pages we can find ourselves. Our aspirations are there, our desires for humanity."<ref name=Hamilton1/> American historian [[Bruce Catton]] noted the prophets, whose "religion was an affair of the workaday world," and their messages that Hamilton described in her "excellent book" are still as relevant today.<ref>{{cite journal | author=Bruce Catton | title =A Modern Message From Ancient Israel | journal =Lansing State Journal | location =Lansing, Michigan | date =May 25, 1936}}</ref> A subsequent edition of the book, ''Spokesmen for God: The Great Teachers of the Old Testament'' (Norton, 1949), supplied additional commentary on the first five books of the Old Testament. Christian Science historian [[Robert Peel (historian)|Robert Peel]] described it as "a work of sheer delight."<ref>''Christian Science Monitor'', Nov. 17, 1949</ref>

[[File:Editions of Hamilton's book.png|thumb|Many editions of Hamilton's magnum opus]]
;''Mythology''
[[John Mason Brown]], American drama critic, praised Hamilton's ''The Greek Way'', placing it at the top among modern-day written about ancient Greece," and ''Mythology'' as "incomparably superior to [[Thomas Bulfinch]]'s work on the subject.<ref name=Citizen/> Hamilton's ''Mythology'' (1942), recounts the stories of classical mythology and ancient fables.<ref name=Kort/> She used an approach to [[mythology]] that was entirely through the literature of the [[classics]]. (She had not traveled to Greece until 1929 and was not an [[archaeology|archaeologist]].) The book received favorable reviews, was another Book-of-the-Month Club selection, and had sold more than four and a half million copies by 1957.<ref name=Citizen>{{cite journal| title =Honorable Citizen | journal =The Hartford Courant | page=128 | location =Hartford, Connecticut | date =September 22, 1968}}</ref><ref>Weber, pp. 44, 47.</ref>

;Later works
In 1942, after moving to Washington, D.C., Hamilton continued to write. At the age of eighty-two she offered new perspectives on the [[New Testament]] in ''Witness to the Truth: Christ and His Interpreters'' (1948) and produced a sequel to ''The Greek Way'', titled ''The Echo of Greece'' (1957).<ref name=Kort/> The sequel to her first book discusses the political ideas of such teachers and leaders as [[Socrates]], [[Plato]], [[Aristotle]], [[Demosthenes]], and [[Alexander the Great]].<ref name=Current/>

Hamilton continued traveling and lecturing in her eighties, and wrote articles, reviews, and translations of Greek plays, including ''The Trojan Women,'' ''Prometheus Bound,'' and ''Agamemnon.'' She also edited, with Huntington Cairns, ''The Collected Dialogues of Plato'' (1961).<ref name=Citizen/>