As a scholar of early Greek culture and writing, Thomas Palaima knows well the story of the plague that the god Apollo visits upon the Greek army in Homer's "Iliad."

Greek king Agamemnon's insulting treatment of a priest is to blame, but nobody has the courage to explain this to Agamemnon. Only when the warrior Achilles promises to provide protection from Agamemnon does the prophet Calchas agree to speak up.

It's still true today: Most people are reluctant to question power. Palaima, 54, a professor of classics at the University of Texas, is not one of them.

He is challenging a new university president, UT's governing board and a sacred institution — Longhorn sports — in a campaign against what he regards as the outsized role of intercollegiate athletics.

Among his beefs are the following:

The low graduation rates of some athletes. About 61 percent of freshman student athletes entering UT in the 1998-99 school year graduated, according to NCAA statistics; 74 percent of UT freshmen overall graduated.

The practice of charging fans up to $75,000 for a stadium suite, with 80 percent of that amount considered a charitable donation for income tax purposes. The free seats given to regents and other VIPs at a value of more than $1 million a year. The policy allowing athletic programs to retain the vast majority of more than $80 million in annual revenue instead of contributing more for academic purposes.

That a lawyer, rather than an academic, oversees athletics. A culture that insists upon first-rate performance in athletics but seems satisfied with a No. 52 ranking among national universities by U.S. News & World Report.

Especially galling to Palaima — pronounced pahl-EYE-muh — were decisions by the regents last month to approve a raise of more than $390,000 in salary, now $2.6 million, for football coach Mack Brown, and to authorize a $149.9 million expansion of the stadium.

Those actions came a few weeks after the Longhorns won the Rose Bowl, securing their first national championship in football in more than 30 years.

Palaima doesn't buy the explanation that athletics pays its own way without consuming any taxes or tuition money. "I'm a sports fan. I played baseball all my life," Palaima said. "But the athletic programs have grown into a monster."

It's largely a one-man campaign, fought in e-mails, in various campus settings and in opinion columns written for the Austin American-Statesman and other publications.

When Palaima questioned UT President William Powers Jr. at a faculty council meeting last week on the role of athletics, no other professors spoke up.

Powers said Palaima raised worthwhile questions but defended the university's policies. Powers, who took office Feb. 1, also promised to provide a more detailed analysis of male athletes' academic performance.

The lack of public support from colleagues doesn't thrill Palaima.

"It's very easy to marginalize a single voice," he said.

On the other hand, it's not hard to understand why even tenured professors might be reluctant to get involved.

"Anytime you make waves, you're not making friends. You're viewed as an oddball," said Michael Granof, an accounting professor and friend of Palaima's. "For most of the faculty, athletics does not affect their vital interest. They've come to the University of Texas knowing what it is, and they expect it."

Palaima might have a point on whether athletics is truly self-funded, Granof said.

"If you were to full-cost it, taking into account all of the benefits athletics gets that are not included in the budget, most notable of which is land, I suspect virtually all programs in the country would be in the red. On the other hand, what's very hard to measure is the goodwill athletics brings."

Edwin Dorn, a professor and former dean of public affairs, said Palaima reflects the views of a substantial portion of the faculty.

"To some extent, he's beating his head against the wall because it is very hard to envision a major change in the relationship that big public universities have with athletics," Dorn said. "He can, however, have some influence at the margin. It's very important that athletics programs are held accountable for the academic performance of their students."

Palaima said he learned his sense of right and wrong from the Roman Catholic Church in Cleveland, where he grew up the son of a postal worker. Although he transferred his emotional and intellectual devotion to the study of humanities in college, a certain reverence and piety stuck.

Like many classicists, Palaima has broad interests. He is equally comfortable quoting Euripides and Dylan. One of the courses he teaches is titled "Myths of War and Violence, Ancient and Modern."

He said he replies to every e-mail he receives in response to his commentary pieces, often copying the exchange — after deleting the sender's name for privacy — to more than 300 people on his e-mail list.

His honors include a Fulbright fellowship and teaching awards from UT's alumni association and honors program. But it was the announcement of his MacArthur fellowship, nicknamed the "genius grant," that prompted the university to recruit him 21 years ago, shortly after turning down his application for a faculty position.

"That gave me a sense of the whimsy of life," he said.