Celebrating the occasion, he visited the Vatican, discussed Galileo with the Pope, and still found time to head the U.S. delegation at an international conference in Patras, Greece.

"This year all there was was the 350th anniversary of Galileo's trial by Inquisition, and that was in April anyway."

Arthur Maass, Thomson Professor of Government

Maass mixed calm observation with 10 minutes of terror and cathedrals with bulls in the summer of 1983. And, he will tell you, he won't deduct a penny of his expenses from next year's income taxes, which is to say, he did it all for his personal pleasure.

Maass spent several months travelling in Spain. The cathedrals came, one after another over a period of several weeks, as he followed a centuries-old pilgrimage route to the cathedral of Santiago de Campotelo.

The bulls came all at once when Maass ran with the young men of Pamplona through deserted city streets chased by a dozen half-ton animals in the annual "running of the bulls." The custom precedes a bullfight in the town's central arena and is a historic test of bravado.

"I didn't run very far and I didn't run very long Naturally, however, it was exciting," he says. Adds a companion who observed the event. "He may not have run far, but he certainly ran fast."

Gregory Nagy, professor of Greek and Latin

With what begins to seem a common introduction to astounding summer tales, Professor Gregory Nagy prefaces a description of his summer with a complaint. "Well, I really didn't do anything terribly interesting."

Actually, Nagy not only took a whale-watching cruise off Cape Cod, he also completed a book of literary criticism on the work of Pindar, an archaic Greek lyric poet.

With his own book under his belt, he hustled down to the University of Texas to deliver a series of lectures on ancient rituals surrounding the inauguration of Greek Olympic Games. "It was just hot," he says of his sojourn in the I one Star State.

Daniel Aaron, Thomas Professor of English and American Literature

It's frustrating to talk to Aaron about his summer vacation because it seems as if the best part of it is yet to come. Aaron could fill a dozen "required essays of three paragraphs" with the activities of the past 12 weeks: he completed work on a five-year diary project, and he supervised the ongoing publication of the new Library of America books collecting the writings of major American authors.

But next week Aaron will be going to Sicily, Japan, and Korea to give a series of lectures on American history. The three-country tour will give him a chance to explain, in 50-minute packages, all of American intellectual history, American ethnic writing, and a variety of other topics.

"They [the lectures] will be presented at conferences designed to acquaint foreigners with specific areas of American history," he explains.