The Loeb Library, Educational Reform, & English Translation

The Story of English's Greatest Library of the Classics

A Century of Preservation & Accessibility

The Loeb Library—the Classic’s most vaunted book series—boasts a printing record lasting over a century. Since the 1910s, it has expanded into hundreds of volumes, reflecting the dedication, prolific output, and labor of love from the publishing company, which aims to keep it current by adapting translation styles and approaches to the times. The series includes English translations of the great classical works of ancient Greek and Roman writers. It’s a story worthy of all bibliophiles’ attention—from its beginnings as a small, democratic effort to make classical works accessible to the everyday reader, to today, as one of the most relied-upon resources for classical scholarship and general enjoyment. The series has truly made a name for itself in the world of English publishing. Of course, you can read more about it on their webpage, where you’ll find eloquent descriptions of their founding and spirit. However, there are a few things they remain silent about, yet to be written. These include their philosophical development and intellectual origins.

Translating for the Masses: The Democratization of Classical Literature

By the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries, elitist tendencies looked down upon translated works, considering them intended for readers “not good enough” in their studies to read the originals. Reading the originals has always been a feat of refined learning; it shows both a dedication to understanding the true depths of a text and an affinity for languages. However, in the real world, it was not expected that low-wage earners or the public would ever juggle such intense tasks. So translated works were always offered by humbler scholars who did not prejudice the people and did not allow their presence in elitist circles to insulate them from the realities of everyday working-class people, who also desired to read the works of the great classical authors. Only the bravest of scholars and humanists, willing to withstand the censures of the era, translated the works of the most prominent authors into English during the 19th century. Figures like Thomas Taylor, the first to publish modern English translations of Plato in the 1820s and 1830s—a century before this cause took shape in broader society—paved the way for others. If the purpose of a book is to be read, then having it translated into various languages is always the generous, democratic thing to do. Not all scholars shared this worldview, but luckily, James Loeb did. Three years before the Great War, Mr. Loeb had long felt the need to further democratize the intellectual sphere.

Philosophical Allies in Education and Accessibility

Loeb lived contemporaneously with John Dewey—among the most influential writers on education of the 20th century. Dewey’s philosophy emphasized the democratization of education and inspiring children to learn through independent inquiry and novel investigation, free from academic strictures telling them what to do. Of course, Dewey advocated for guidance, suggesting that schools should provide children with general expectations and ways to approach tasks. But ultimately, under Dewey’s thinking, education should largely be an independent task, one that is perpetual or lifelong. Then, we have Will Durant, active around the same time—a famous historian who, alongside his wife, Ariel, penned a voluminous series on world history, as well as numerous books on philosophy and its history.

The Durants advocated for eliminating casuistry (pretensions to intelligent thought) or circumlocution (repetitive and confusing language) as barriers to separate the scholarly learned from the everyday learner. The Durants, learned in the ancient philosophical traditions, knew this was a movement gone astray from the original purpose of philosophy, which was to train people with guided writings and public speeches—both simply put—on how to live better lives and view the world as governed by universal law, not to give in to the mind’s temptations to think of the world as the chaotic mess it appears to be at every moment of our lives. We could go further, but for the sake of time, we’ll restrict ourselves to a few more beacons of educational democracy—starting with George Santayana, a man whose thought Bertrand Russell and Mr. Durant highly respected. Santayana, who famously posited that to ignore history is to be condemned to repeat it, was also a man who, as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, helped to “fight off idealisms” and “view philosophy as literature”—a sentiment shared by Durant.

Santayana wrote in a clear style, devoid of the definitional tendencies or dogma of style so common to academics. He also advocated for philosophical realism, which, as we mentioned, is more attuned to the original purposes and style of ancient Greek philosophy. Although a fan of philosophical realism, Bertrand Russell developed and exercised a wholly different type of analytical philosophy, which he developed with Alfred North Whitehead. Analytical philosophy seeks to use logic, logical syllogisms, and mathematical principles to encapsulate and try to identify or pinpoint moral behavior. It is, in a way, like the Kantian worldview, which is highly analytical but not as mathematical.

For context, analytical philosophy developed as a forefront movement, active post-World War II, but was quickly challenged by ‘Wittgensteinian’ thought, which sought to eliminate the notion that philosophy could encapsulate truth in language. Moreover, the horrors of two world wars, the rise of tyrants, and the depths of human evil made it hard to believe humanity could ever be coldly, mathematically defined. Instead, Wittgenstein posited that language has limits and that certain philosophical concepts might lie beyond what language can accurately convey. Translations of philosophical works thus revealed the unavoidable gaps in conveying original thought, as Wittgenstein so fervently enjoyed claiming.

Pragmatism & Practicality in Thought

Finally, we have the advent of the great philosophers who, arising from their studious slumbers of the late 19th century, enriched the yet-virgin fields of 20th-century philosophy with Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Pragmatism’s main inventors, Charles Sanders Pierce and William James, were intent on establishing for the world a synthesis of, as the title says, an old way of thinking. This thinking boils down to common sense to sensible minds, ironically associated with such minds as disliked philosophy for all its alleged needless complexity or ostentation. Ironically, this view was crowned as pragmatism—a philosophy. Whereas Benthamite utilitarianism advocates for a calculus of “maximal public benefit” in what one does, pragmatism focuses on achieving the possible using the tools fully grounded in the real, not in desired behaviors and functions of the world.

Loeb’s Intellectual Environment and Inspirations

Where, then, does this evolution of thought—this band of men against the prevailing winds, which began in the 1900s-1910s—leave us with Mr. James Loeb and his epic library? How exactly did it come about amid such opposition? Mr. Loeb had a vested interest in reading such men (Dewey, Durant, Santayana, and Russell), both to network with like-minded individuals and to establish credibility for his ideas as not being ideologically confined to him. If not directly influenced by these men, Mr. Loeb must have at least shared in the spirit of the times, which began to open up the gates of scholarship to the people, not just to scholars. Indeed, it’s hard to see Mr. Loeb not having read, even idly, any of their works during the early days of their budding fame.

Challenges and Resistance in Publishing the Loeb Library

Mr. Loeb struggled for several years before the inception of his series came to be. It was an ironic turn of events that he was surrounded by scholars whose works and ideas would not be celebrated and embraced by the world until decades later, during the interwar period and beyond, into the 1930s and 40s. In this respect, those future-renowned thinkers remained unheard at the time, while the voices that dominated James Loeb’s era were largely elitist figures still harboring 19th-century prejudicial views.

Marketability and the Reluctance of Publishers

Now, for Mr. Loeb to realize his dream, he needed publishers. And publishers care more for the marketability of a work than its merit. It’s not personal, but simply business; after all, this is how they earn their bread. Furthermore, any published author understands the dynamics with their publishers: once an author attaches themselves to a style or theme, a publisher may balk if handed a manuscript that diverges drastically from the client’s established brand, image, or name—often becoming reluctant to publish it. When a publisher encounters an author whose work, regardless of quality, appears too nebulous, too indefinable, or too lacking in marketability, the outcome is often rejection, and the author’s project goes nowhere. To achieve financial gain, an author’s body of work must look uniform in theme and scope.

The Role of Financial Resources in Loeb’s Success

Of course, Mr. Loeb had the advantage of wealth, which inherently increased the marketability of anything he wished to publish. However, his relatively unknown character and lack of prominence in academic circles frustrated this advantage.

Triumph Over Adversity: The Birth of the Loeb Classical Library

So, imagine the hesitation with which an upstart—despite his prominence (Mr. Loeb had connections)—was met, being both unknown in the academic field and proposing a wholly unfamiliar concept: a massive, encyclopedic translation series of all the surviving Greek and Roman writings. Any publisher willing to accept this daring endeavor would need to invest as an entrepreneur, facing the massive risk of financial loss or gain.

War’s Impact on Knowledge: The Loeb Library During WWII

George Macmillan, a publisher, rejected Loeb’s plan for the book series library, saying, “I have conferred with my partners… and I am sorry to say that we cannot form a favorable opinion of it from any point of view.” However, the magnificence and prestige of such a possible work captured the interest of William Heinemann one day, and he agreed with Mr. Loeb to begin the project. Coordination, logistics, and financial support would all fall into his hands. Prominent classicists were quickly hired as editors, with additional general editors to oversee them. James Loeb therefore lived to see his project grow to a massive extent. By the 1930s, there were a reliable 100,000 and more volumes ready for consumption. Loeb died in 1933. The Second World War devastated the project’s prolificacy—printing was often interrupted, especially since operations were based in London, a target of the Luftwaffe’s bombing campaigns known as the Blitz. Further, Kriegsmarine U-boats were known to have sunk several cargo ships carrying thousands of Loeb volumes, plunging words of wisdom down to Davy Jones’ locker.

Loeb’s Vision: A Bridge Between Ancient Wisdom and Modern Minds

James Loeb was a prudent man. It’s worth mentioning his discretion on the specific layout of the books. The translation would not contain all the books. For every page, one would be in the original Greek or Latin, and the next in English. This way, students of Latin and Greek could seamlessly compare the language to their native one, allowing for immediate reference as they read. It also allowed—and this was the key point of it all—readers not versed in the classics to skip the originals and plow through the English text, familiarizing themselves with the ideas, the facts, the feelings of the ancient age, if not the language itself. This was, in every sense of the phrase, a revolution of the mind. Loeb did not just foresee a world where ancient wisdom was for all, not just a few—he also, alongside many others, noticed a downward trend in classical literacy, no longer taught as it once was in American or British universities, as in other ages. And therefore, therein lay the more sober, less romantic incentive to build the Anglicized Greek and Roman library. We can explain the myriad causes of this loss in language by the advent of STEM—we must remember the exponential technology of the age. The then-recent creation of the first successful airplane design in the 1910s, the radio, filmography, etc., all contributed to the new age, less and less defined by the written word, and more and more by action, by things viewed or heard. The realization of scientists and their community that, through collective action, such things as reaching the skies and communicating across swaths of land without the knick-knack of clicking around on telegraphs, reached a feverish pitch of desiring more—more research, more planning, more everything. Thereby, universities were, systematically, at least in the Anglosphere, shifted in focus from humanities—the study of humanity—to technology, that double-edged sword which finds the most innovative ways to both comfort and ail humankind.

Therefore, the Loeb was seen as wanting to have its cake and wanting to eat it too. It was simultaneously an empathic project in acquiescence to the times, helping students adjust to the changing cultural climate and academic desiderata by allowing them to read ancient works, just not in the originals, and a contemptuous project, in the eyes of more critical observers, helping further the undeserved abandonment of original language acquisition by disseminating mass translations. Loeb himself must have felt that inner conflict—he understood he could do little to change the unfortunate loss of Latin- and Greek-speaking youth, but he also understood that to translate, especially at his scope, would be to virtually seal the fate of such youth ever existing again. And as things now stand, with the current near-veneration of STEM over the humanities—and declining literacy rates among new generations—such a trained youth seems impossibly remote. Today, we’d find an older scholar reading both original and English pages of the Loeb and think nothing of it. But a young person? Highly unlikely.

A Changing Scholarly Standard: From Polyglot Purism to Native-Language Expertise

In the early 1900s, any classicist not knowing ancient languages was unthinkable—today, it’s not uncommon, nor unexpected, that a scholar may never read in the originals, and may publish commentaries and papers on works entirely read by them in their native tongue. This would be seen by elitists as scandalous a century ago, let alone farther back. It could, indeed, compromise the perceived validity of their scholarship. It would be seen as intellectual treason, as cowardice to confront revered texts “up front” or mere laziness. Of course, not all people would have made such a fuss; pedants have always existed. Prejudice has always existed, also. But it held true in this time that one in academia without polyglot-like handling of languages was doomed to relentless suspicion.­

Popular Demand: Loeb Library’s Widespread Appeal Across Classes

The Loeb Library was an immediate success. Despite the expensive price at which it sold, a hodgepodge of classes lined up at bookstores the Anglo-world over. People were hungry to at last read what wise Seneca had to counsel on old age; what musing Menander had to write about human folly; what mighty Caesar had to say of his brutal warring. To do so, buying them all in bundles, and all in English? It was a dream come true to any nerd. This was truly a time in which English-speaking peoples had at their fingertips the most generous classical scholarship. It remains such a time today, for the Loeb Library is set to publish even now new volumes, new translations.

The Rise of English as the Global Language of Scholarship

Its quality has waxed and waned as time goes on. It is obvious today that works written in English render them the most accessible to the world—the language being the lingua franca of the global community. This was less true a hundred years ago. English colonial powers still controlled much of the world, yes, but expecting the world to communicate in English with each other had not yet materialized. This only happened post-World War II, with America’s rise to a power unprecedented in all of world history. Therefore, English translations of the Loeb, before the world wars, had more leeway to exercise playful or artistic liberties in English.

Creative Translation: Dialects and Artistic Liberties of Early Loeb Editions

This is not to imply that newer translations of any work into English are therefore less creative. But it is true that in previous ages, the use of Scots, for example, in English works was quite common when wishing to depict a different dialect of English (a controversial opinion, by the way). For example, one of the classical works translated by Loeb is a Greek poem in which “aliens” (foreign peoples) speak in a different dialect. The Greek indeed changes dialect as the poem switches to their voices. Therefore, the Loeb translators of the early 1920s chose to switch to Scots to represent this foreign language. Nowadays, this would be seen as highly inappropriate; back then, it was assumed the reader would have a background well-versed in English minutiae. Nowadays, we understand that not all English-speaking peoples are familiar with the more complicated aspects of its split into different accents or merges into other dialects, nor that they wish to be. We can imagine the frustration today of purchasing an English-translated work, only to find a single sentence therein not in English, let alone whole pages.

Archaisms and Assumed Literacies in Early Translations

Further, when ancient Greeks wrote in archaic styles even for their time, or wrote generally in a lofty manner, Loeb’s translators a century ago would therefore render the English in the style of the King James Bible, with all the wherefores, thines, thys, -ests, and -eths. Again, this would be inappropriate today—for the sheer reason that the use of archaisms within what is expected to be a work in plain language is annoying, and because artistic liberty no longer strays so far as to permit such a work to be marketable. Back then, again, we see assumed qualities in the reader—that they were well-read in Shakespeare and biblical literature, and, perhaps, that they were Christian.

Universities of the day commonly assigned Elizabethan literature, and alumni rates for religious schools, where daily Bible reading was routine, statistically far outshone those of today. Hence, the assumption that the reader would be familiar with such “fancy” English was not all that outlandish a century ago.

Today, not all people are familiar with the KJV. Its reputation, as the world becomes more secular, as the pinnacle work of English writing, if not untrue, no longer holds primacy over people’s heads as a must-read; other translations exist, in more recent language, which comfort those who want to understand every verse as closely as possible.

The standards of the day thus reflected a normalcy in speaking English while being versed in English culture, history, and literary traditions. Whereas, today, we understand better than ever that to speak this language no longer implies anything of the sort.

Modern Expectations for Accessibility in Classical Translation

Apart from assuming people’s religions—a problematic thing—it may indeed be good today to assume such familiarity with literature among readers of any age if they bother to read such heavy works as those of Hesiod or Virgil; but that would not thereby justify writing in Early Modern English today, whereas it was seen as perfectly acceptable to do so back then.

The pithiness of today’s English stems from the need to attune to a global audience. Artistic and strictly local play with language now seems a relic of bygone days, as it would likely be unpublishable today. However, as the original mission of the Loeb Library was to disseminate classical works in understandable language, Loeb himself would likely approve of the translations changing according to the times. And the library, as it stands, is still in harmony with its century-old mission. Indeed, we can imagine him aghast to find century-old translation philosophies still being used today, viewing it as the very nadir of intellectual stagnation. As the Loeb Library themselves put it on their website, “[Early Modern English] is not prose that one would want to read for 500 pages and, for today’s readers at least, it’s also not in keeping with James Loeb’s original vision of making the Loeb Classical Library as accessible as possible.”

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