ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT
1872 - 1964
Elizabeth Hazelton Haight was born in Auburn, New York on February
ll, 1872. She was graduated from Vassar College in l894, received
the master's degree here in 1899 and the Ph.D. from Cornell in 1909.
Following her graduation from.Vassar she taught Latin for a year
at Rye Seminary, for six years at the Emma Willard School, and a
year at Packer Collegiate Institute. She returned to Vassar as
Instructor in Latin in 1902. For the forty years until her retire-
ment in 1942 she served in the successive ranks from Instructor to
Professor and Chairman of the Department. An outstanding Classicist
and feminist Miss Haight was among the last of a generation of dedi-
cated women who comprised a distinguished company of women professors
at this and other comparable colleges, a company which chose the pro-
fession of college teaching in an era when the choice was likely to
preclude marriage and home life in the ordinary sense. Miss Haight
made Vassar College her home and her life. She was a gracious lady
and an impressive teacher who comanded the loyalty of generation
after generation of students.
As a member of the faculty of Vassar College, Miss Haight was inde-
fatigable in her effort to build up a strong department of Latin
and to maintain for Classical studies the important place she
believed they should occupy in higher education in the Liberal Arts.
One of her many achievements for the Department and the College was
the transformation in 1937 of one of the dingiest of Avery Hall's
classrooms into the present handsome Classical Museum, which serves
not only to house and display Vassar's valuable collection of anti-
quities and coins in an attractive setting, but also as a comfortable
classroom and small lecture room.
Miss Haight had a firm grasp of both immediate and larger college
problems. To the younger members of her own department she was both
inspiration and guide, more zealous in emphasizing what could be
praised in their work than in pointing out shortcomings. She was
unsparing in her efforts to secure for all serious young scholars
both opportunity and support for research, and unflagging in her
interest in their efforts and achievements. In meetings of the
faculty it was often Miss Haight who summed up the sometimes tangent-
ial discussion and defined the issue, clarifying the crucial ques-
tions and bringing the objective into focus. Presidents, trustees
and other department chairmen talked over their diverse educational
and administrative problems with her and went away aided by her
experience and wisdom and strengthened by her unswerving devotion to
the good of Vassar.
ELIZABETH HAZELTON HAIGHT (Continued)
In the mid-thirties, when scholars were fleeing Hitler's Germany,
Miss Haight was chiefly instrumental in organizing a program of
visiting scholars, which brought to Vassar a series of distinguished
professors as guests, free to give open lectures and to meet with
advanced classes and student organizations. Many of these were
enabled through their visit to Vassar to secure appointments in
American colleges and universities.
Miss Haight was a vital force not only in the development of Vassar
College but also in the larger field of Classical studies in America.
Choosing as her special field the poetry of Horace and the Augustan
Age, she published in 1925 her book on Horace and His Art of enjoyment
This was followed at frequent intervals by books on Apuleius and his
Influence, Romance in the Latin Elegiac Poets, Essays on Ancient
Fiction, The Roman Use of Anecdotes, and a number of others.
Earlier, in the years from 1915 to 1919, she had collaborated with
President James Monroe Taylor on a book about the College called
simply Vassar, had edited the Autobiography and Letters of Matthew
Vassar, and then in his turn The Life and Letters of James Monroe
Taylor.
Miss Haight's books on the Classics were written for the student
encountering the Latin texts of her Roman authors rather than for
the specialized scholar, and many generations of Vassar students
found through her a view of life seasoned by Horace, which became
for them the "robur et aes triplex" of their lives. Her eminence
as teacher and scholar was recognized by her election as president
of the American Philological Association in 1934 - the first woman
to hold that office since the founding of the Association in Pough-
keepsie in 1869. On the iniative of a group of alumnae, the Trustees
established in 1952 the Elizabeth Hazelton Haight Fund for Research
in Classics, in honor of her achievement in research and her tenth
year as Professor Emeritus of Vassar College.
Elizabeth Haight was one of the great builders of this College.
Her name will always occupy a significant place in its history.
Myrtle Soles Erck
Theodore Henry Erck
Inez Scott Ryberg
XVI 216-217