Moses Hadas was one of the leading classical scholars of the 20th-century and a translator of numerous works. Brought up in an Orthodox Jewish household, he earned a rabbinical degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary in 1926 while pursuing graduate studies in Greek and Latin literature at Columbia University. He was fluent in Yiddish, German, ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, and well-versed in other languages. His most productive years were spent at Columbia University, where he was John Jay Professor of Greek (1930-1965) and a colleague of Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling. Although known as a shy man, Hadas embraced television as a tool for education, and become a TV lecturer and pundit. He also recorded classical works on record and tape. He married as his second wife Elizabeth Chamberlayne Hadas, a longtime secondary school Latin teacher in New York City also remembered for her Latin translation of Ferdinand the Bull.
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