(
The philosophy of Seneca has extended in influence from...)
The philosophy of Seneca has extended in influence from first-century Rome to the essays of Montaigne, to Elizabethan tragedy, to the theology of Calvin and the doctrines of the French Revolution.
In The Stoic Philosophy of Seneca, representative selections from Seneca's writings offer the reader an excellent introduction to the range of his work.
The selections are drawn from the essays, or dialogues, and the "Consolations;" from the treatises, of which "On Clemency," addressed to the young Nero, is included here; and from the Letters to Lucilius, which have to do not only with philosophical subjects but also with Seneca's personal experiences, such as journeys and visits.
Moses Hadas has selected letters and essays which reveal Seneca's major philosophical themes―the relationship of the individual to society and to the gods; the meaning of pain and misfortune; man's attitudes to change, time, and death; and the nature of the highest good and of the happy life. In his Introduction, Professor Hadas discusses Seneca's life and work, tracing the history of his reputation; comments on Seneca's style; and outlines the origins and tenets of Stoicism.
Hellenistic Culture: Fusion and Diffusion (The Norton library)
(The miracle of Greece is not single but twofold: first th...)
The miracle of Greece is not single but twofold: first the unrivaled rapidity and variety and quality of its achievement, and then its success in permeating and imposing its values upon alien civilizations. What combination of factors gave rise to the first we can only speculate; for the second we have tangible evidence. In this book, Moses Hadas sets forth and illustrates some of the ways in which Greek modes of thought, Greek taste, and Greek ideals became part of the continuing European heritage.
(The standard translation of Joseph ben Meir (ibn) Zabara'...)
The standard translation of Joseph ben Meir (ibn) Zabara's SEFER SHAASHUIM, a classic of rhymed Hebrew prose and Hebrew belles-lettres from the Arabic milieu.
Moses Hadas was an American teacher, a classical scholar, and a translator of numerous works.
Background
Moses Hadas was born on June 25, 1900, in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, David Hadas and Gertrude Draizen. His father was a shopkeeper and a scholar, who published in Hebrew and Latin on the rabbinical exegesis of the Pentateuch.
Education
Hadas first studied Greek and Latin at Boys High School in Atlanta. He took his Bachelor's degree at Emory University in 1922, having studied classics under E. K. Turner and C. E. Boyd.
Hadas received his Master's degree (1925) and Doctor of Philosophy degree (1930) in classics at Columbia University and a rabbinical degree at Jewish Theological Seminary (1926). At Columbia, in classes where he was often the sole pupil, he learned philological and historical method from C. W. Keyes, E. D. Perry, and W. L. Westermann.
The teacher to whom he owed, in Hadas' words, "a new conception of the methods, aims, and ideals of scholarship, and of the obligation of teacher to pupil" was Charles Knapp.
Career
Hadas' dissertation, published as Sextus Pompey (1930), remains the authoritative biography of its subject. Hadas taught two years (1928 - 1930) at the University of Cincinnati and then returned to Columbia, where he served in the Department of Greek and Latin until his death. From 1956 to 1966 he was Jay Professor of Greek.
During his Columbia years, Hadas achieved a fame that transcends narrow boundaries. His lifework divides into scholarship, popularization, and teaching. His most enduring scholarly contributions are his dissertation, his editions of The Epistle of Aristeas (1950) and Third and Fourth Maccabees (1953), and his own Hellenistic Culture (1959). These books display his mastery of Greek and Jewish sources and his consistently sound judgment. His command of German enabled him to translate important secondary works into English: Alfred Koerte's Hellenistic Poetry (1929), Elias Bickermann's The Maccabees (1947), F. A. Gregorovius' The Ghetto and the Jews of Rome (1948), Jacob Burckhardt's The Age of Constantine the Great (1949), Walter F. Otto's The Homeric Gods (1954), and (with James Willis) Hermann Fränkel's Early Greek Poetry and Philosophy (1975). Hadas wrote that anyone who entered classics in the Great Depression was "foolhardy" but "willingness to starve did prove something. " As a member of "the generation of the deluge, " he watched sorrowfully as the classics were banished from the center of the liberal arts to near oblivion. He was molded by defeat. His first duty became to rescue the classical heritage for Democratic America.
Hadas long taught extra classes without additional stipend. Concerned because Victorian translations had become an impediment to appreciating the classics almost as formidable as the ancient languages, Hadas saw the desperate need for translations that modern American readers could understand. He began an American tradition of prose translations. He translated Euripides (1936), Xenophon of Ephesus and Longus (1953), Seneca (1956 - 1958), selections from Roman historians (1956), Plutarch (1957), and Heliodorus (1957). From the Hebrew, he translated Joseph Ben Meir Zabara's Book of Delight (1932) and the fables of Berechiah ha-Nakdan (1967).
Hadas' greatest single contribution to humane studies in America was his establishment of courses on the classics in translation in the Columbia General Education program, despite the bitter opposition of older classical colleagues. The introduction of these and the required humanities course at Columbia College began what he later called "the American Renascence. "
His teaching and frequent lecturing extended the popularization of the classics far beyond the Columbia campus. That Sophocles is almost as well known as Shakespeare to so many Americans educated after 1945 is largely due to Hadas. His frequently reprinted histories of Greek (1950) and Latin (1952) literature and his Ancilla to Classical Reading (1954) were intended as aids to teachers. Hadas and Gilbert Highet made the Columbia classics department the best known in America. Moses Hadas died on August 17, 1966, in Aspen, Colorado.
Moses Hadas was one of the first American Jews to gain tenure in what was then an anti-Semitic profession, but he rejected traditional Judaism and took his religion from Spinoza. Hadas detested official Christianity; indeed, as Norman Podhoretz justly observed in Making It, Hadas had a "positively Voltairean hatred of clergymen of any and all denominations. " After 1945, Plutarch became one of his favorite authors, a fact that tells us much about Hadas himself. "The amiable and charming sage of Chaeronea, " as Hadas referred to Plutarch, resisted the sirens of Christianity and Rome to make of Hellenism a cult whose "prophet and high priest" he became. In such Hellenism, Hadas sought the moral salvation of his own age.
Views
Quotations:
"I am a teacher. Except for wars and holidays I have never been out of the sound of a school bell. I have written books and given public lectures, but these I have regarded as part of my teaching. The life I lead is the most agreeable I can imagine. "
"The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination. "
Personality
To students, Moses Hadas was a revered figure but always accessible. To colleagues, he was an urbane despot, an aristocratic liberal, erudite, elegant, and always ironic.
Although he was known as a quiet, even shy man, Hadas made his presence felt at the College as a prolific scholar and as one of the College's truly great teachers.
Connections
In 1926, Moses Hadas married Ethel J. Elkus, by whom he had two children. They divorced in 1945.
In 1945, Hadas married Elizabeth M. Chamberlayne. They had two children as well.