Jowett, BENJAMIN, the translator of Plato, was born at Camberwell in 1817, and educated at St Paul's School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he had a distinguished career, taking the Hertford scholarship in 1837, a classical first-class in 1839, and the Latin essay in 1841. Already a Fellow in 1838, he was tutor of his college from 1840 till his election as master in 1870. Thus his whole life had been identified with Balliol, and as master his influence is supposed to have permeated the college to a degree almost unexampled. He was a member with Macaulay of the Commission for inquiry into the mode of admission to the Indian Civil Service, and he was appointed in 1855 to the regius professorship of Greek at Oxford. He received the degree of Doctor from Leyden in 1875, Edinburgh in 1884, and Cambridge in 1890, and acted as vice-chancellor from 1882 till 1886. His theological writings are an article 'On the Interpretation of Scripture' in Essays and Reviews (1860), for the alleged heresies in which he was tried but acquitted by the vice-chancellor's court; and a Commentary on the Epistles of St Paul to the Thessalonians, Galatians, and Romans (2 vols. 1855); and his College Sermons (1895). He is best known by his translation of the Dialogues of Plato (4 vols. 1871; 2d ed. 5 vols. 1876), with its admirably learned and lucid introductions, and his less happy versions of Thucydides (2 vols. 1881) and the Politics of Aristotle (1885). He died 1st October 1893.
See the Life and Letters by E. Abbott and L. Campbell (1897-99), and a sketch by Lionel Tollemache (1895).