Georges Maximilien Antoine Grube (2 August 1899 – 13 December 1982) was a Canadian scholar, university professor, and democratic socialist political activist. He was a classicist and translator of Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, and Marcus Aurelius, and was one of the founders of the New Democratic Party of Canada.
Life and Career
Grube was born in Antwerp, Belgium, and educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham, England. During the First World War, he served as a translator for the Belgian Army attached to the British Expeditionary Force. After the war, he studied classics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, earning a first-class BA in 1922 and an MA in 1925.
He moved to Canada in 1928 to begin his career as a professor of classics at the University of Trinity College in the University of Toronto, becoming head of the classics department in 1931. A committed socialist and pacifist, Grube was active in the Toronto branch of the League for Social Reconstruction (LSR), serving as its president from 1934 to 1935, and later as editor of the Canadian Forum magazine from 1937 to 1941.
From 1944 to 1946, he was President of the Ontario Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) executive. In August 1961, he served as one of the co-chairs presiding over the founding convention of the New Democratic Party in Ottawa. He ran unsuccessfully several times for the House of Commons in the Broadview electoral district.
Scholarly Work
Grube retired from the University of Toronto in 1970 but continued writing new translations of Plato's works until his death. In 1968, he won the Award of Merit from the American Philological Association for his 1965 book The Greek and Roman Critics, recognized for outstanding contribution to classical scholarship.
His notable translations include:
- Plato's Thought (1935)
- The Drama of Euripides (1941)
- On Great Writing (translation of Longinus's On the Sublime, 1957)
- On Poetry and Style (translation of Aristotle's Poetics, 1958)
- Meditations (translation of Marcus Aurelius, 1963)
- The Republic (translation of Plato, 1974)
- Plato's Meno (1976)
- Plato's Phaedo (1977)
- Five Dialogues (translation of Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, Crito, Meno, and Phaedo, 1981)
Grube died in Toronto on 13 December 1982 at the age of 83.
