Benjamin Jowett

Benjamin Jowett was an English classical scholar and one of the best-known teachers at Victorian Oxford. He became Regius Professor of Greek in 1855, Master of Balliol College in 1870, and Vice-Chancellor of the university from 1882 to 1886. Many later politicians and writers had been his pupils.

His most lasting work is his English translation of the complete Dialogues of Plato, published in 1871 after about ten years of work and revised in later editions. Each dialogue came with an introductory essay. The translation helped make Plato part of ordinary English reading, and because it is long out of copyright it is the version found on Project Gutenberg and most free sites.

Jowett's Timaeus and Critias are the texts in which Plato tells the story of Atlantis, which the character Critias says came from Egyptian priests by way of Solon. Jowett translated the story; he did not treat it as history, and most classicists today read it as a philosophical tale invented by Plato.