Moses Hadas (June 25, 1900,

Atlanta, Georgia Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,7 ...

– August 17, 1966) was an American teacher, a classical scholar, and a translator of numerous works from Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and German.

Life

Raised in

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...

in a

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ve ...

-speaking

Orthodox Jewish Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses on M ...

household, his early studies included

rabbi A rabbi () is a spiritual leader or religious teacher in Judaism. One becomes a rabbi by being ordained by another rabbi – known as ''semikha'' – following a course of study of Jewish history and texts such as the Talmud. The basic form of ...

nical training."The Many Lives of Moses Hadas by Rachel Hadas"
/ref> He graduated from Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1926) and took his doctorate in classics in 1930. He was fluent in Yiddish, German, ancient Hebrew,

ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, French, and Italian, and well-versed in other languages. His most productive years were spent at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

, where he was a colleague of

Jacques Barzun Jacques Martin Barzun (; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, and ...

and Lionel Trilling. There he bucked the prevailing classical methods of the day—

textual criticism Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books. Such texts may range in da ...

and

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraints, a field that includes domain ...

—presenting classics, even in translation, as worthy of study as

literary works Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

in their own right. He embraced

television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

as a tool for education, becoming a telelecturer and a pundit on broadcast television. He also recorded classical works on phonograph and tape. His daughter Rachel Hadas is a poet, teacher, essayist, and translator. With his first wife, he had a son David Hadas (1931-2004), a professor of English and Religious Studies at Washington University; and Jane Streusand. Hadas is credited with two celebrated witticisms: - "This book fills a much-needed gap." - "Thank you for sending me a copy of your book. I'll waste no time reading it."

Selected works

*''Sextus Pompey''. 1930 *''Book of delight'', by Joseph ben Meir Zabara; translated by Moses Hadas; with an introduction by Merriam Sherwood. 1932 *''History of Greek literature''. 1950 *''History of Latin literature''. 1952. *''Greek poets''. 1953 *''Ancilla to classical reading''. 1954 *'' Oedipus''. translated with an introd. by Moses Hadas. 1955 *''History of Rome, from its origins to 529 A.D., as told by the Roman historians''. 1956 *''

Thyestes In Greek mythology, Thyestes (pronounced , gr, Θυέστης, ) was a king of Olympia. Thyestes and his brother, Atreus, were exiled by their father for having murdered their half-brother, Chrysippus, in their desire for the throne of Olym ...

''. Translated, with an introduction by Moses Hadas. 1957 *''Stoic philosophy of Seneca; essays and letters of Seneca.''. 1958 *''Hellenistic culture: fusion and diffusion''. 1959 *''Humanism: the Greek ideal and its survival''. 1960 *''Essential works of Stoicism''. 1961 *''Old wine, new bottles; a humanist teacher at work''. 1962 *''Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Modern abridgment, 1962 *''Hellenistic literature''. 1963 *''Style the repository''. 1965 *''Heroes and gods; spiritual biographies in antiquity'', by Moses Hadas and

Morton Smith Morton Smith (May 28, 1915 – July 11, 1991)Neusner, Jacob, ''Christianity, Judaism, and other Greco-Roman Cults. Part 1: New Testament'', ed. J. Neusner, ''Studies for Morton Smith at Sixty, vol 1, New Testament'' (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975), p. ...

. 1965 *''Introduction to classical drama''. Foreword by Alvin C. Eurich. 1966 *''Living tradition''. 1967 *''

Solomon Maimon Salomon Maimon (; ; lt, Salomonas Maimonas; he, שלמה בן יהושע מימון‎; 1753 – 22 November 1800) was a philosopher born of Lithuanian Jewish parentage in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, present-day Belarus. Some of his work w ...

'', an autobiography / edited and with a preface by Moses Hadas. 1975

Discography

During the fifties, Hadas recorded several albums of Latin and Greek works on Folkways Records.Hadas Discography
at

Smithsonian Folkways Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was fo ...

* ''The Story of Virgil's Aeneid: Introduction and Readings in Latin (and English) by Professor Moses Hadas'' (1955) * ''The Latin Language: Introduction and Reading in Latin (and English) by Professor Moses Hadas of Columbia University'' (1955) * ''Plato on the Death of Socrates: Introduction with Readings from the Apology and the Phaedo in Greek & in English trans.'' (1956) * ''Caesar: Readings in Latin and English by Professor Moses Hadas'' (1956) * ''Cicero: Commentary and Readings in Latin and English by Moses Hadas'' (1956) * ''Longus - Daphnis and Chloe: Read by Moses Hadas from His Translation'' (1958)

References

External links

*https://dbcs.rutgers.edu/all-scholars/8754-hadas-moses
"The Many Lives of Moses Hadas"
by Rachel Hadas, ''Columbia University Alumni Magazine'', Fall 2001

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Finding aid to Moses Hadas papers at Columbia University. Rare Book & Manuscript Library.
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Hadas, Moses American classical scholars 1900 births 1966 deaths Classical scholars of Columbia University American literary critics Greek–English translators Yiddish-speaking people Jewish Theological Seminary of America alumni 20th-century American non-fiction writers Jewish American writers American Orthodox Jews Jewish scholars Scholars of ancient Greek literature Scholars of Latin literature 20th-century translators People from Atlanta Place of death missing 20th-century American Jews