If Paul Veyne is an essential historian of XXe century, it is for his work on Greco-Roman Antiquity, but also for his intellectual curiosity, his resolute taste for multidisciplinarity, his humor, the freedom which permeates all his research. A maverick at the heart of institutions, profound and dilettante, Veyne invites us to a celebration of thought.
Paul Veyne occupies a unique place in the French intellectual panorama. This specialist in Rome, who became a professor at the Collège de France, is the author of major works (The Bread and the Circus, How History is Written) which remain without equivalent in historical studies. Erudite and light, imposing and funny, lastingly marked by his companionship with Michel Foucault, Veyne does not follow any model and only resembles himself.
From Aix to Rome
Paul Veyne was born in 1930 in Aix, formerly Aquae Sextiae. It therefore sees the light of day on an ancient land, which may be enough to determine a career as a historian. As a teenager during the war, he chose to “ shelter » (or first intellectual refuge) the archaeological museum of Nîmes, an immense reservoir of steles and Roman reliefs. He enjoys deciphering Latin inscriptions, an unusual pastime and a harbinger of things to come: his taste for social and economic history is already there. Ten years old when the call came on June 18, he was too young to join the Resistance. The fact that his family was Pétainist remained for a long time an inexhaustible source of torment, favoring his early commitment to communism.
But before that, we had to go to Paris, where Veyne was admitted to the École Normale Supérieure in 1951. Four years later, he passed the grammar aggregation, the most technical of literary aggregations. To meet the requirements of this competition, the Greek theme is practiced in high doses. This leaves no room for chance or rhetoric. Throughout his scientific life, Veyne also admitted to reading Greek texts more readily than Latin ones, which is – for once – only a half-paradox in this man with often confusing positions.
After the aggregation, he left for another School, whose program was then to have none: the French School of Rome. A scholè in the first sense: a beautiful leisure activity. It is still a question of learning about archeology and field work, by strolling through Italy, then crossing the Mediterranean, to see the ruins of North Africa. Veyne is dazzled in Italian museums. He went to Campania and frequented a casino in Naples (very different from that of Enghien, casino means brothel in Italian). He searched in Utica, near Carthage, where he understood that the pickaxe would remain for him a gardening accessory.
Despite all its denials, erudition never abandons it (a well-understood erudition, not that which suffocates when one does not know how to get out of it). As evidenced by the start of his study devoted to “ The table of the Ligurians Baebiani and the food institution of Trajan », published in 1957 in the Blends of archeology and historythe periodical of the French School of Rome. The commentary on a long Latin inscription forms its core. Agrarian and demographic questions are treated with precision, not without ulterior motives: the history that Veyne then practices is, without saying it, that of Annalsa minority current in the French university of this time, even more of a minority in the world of antiquities, disinclined to methodological openness.
During his Roman years, Veyne confirmed his great penchant for friendship. His escapades at the Nîmes museum were already accomplished in the company of a “ real boyfriend “. It is the same in Italy. His complicity with Georges Ville (1928-1967), another normalien who left to complete his training at the School of Rome, was then consolidated. Veyne will always remain faithful to him, to the point of publishing in 1981, posthumously, his thesis on gladiature in the West. Just as he will never stop doing justice to the thoughts of his friend Michel Foucault. This deep sense of friendship can make one regret that he had not worked on theamicitia of the Ancients.
A man of unwavering friendships, he is also an unrepentant charmer. His life is punctuated by love stories that led him to the heart of ecstatic experiences. His face distorted by a rare disease has never prevented him from seducing. He even married three times. like Cicero, Caesar and Ovid » !
Education and pleasure
The thesis which germinated in Rome was given the title: “ The system of donations in Roman municipal life “. The director is the austere William Seston, a specialist in late Antiquity. The complementary thesis concerns, for its part, “ social roles in Roman funerary art “. The historian wants to understand the importance of the gift in Roman society during the imperial period, i.e. the widespread practice of “ evergetism »: these large expenditures made by the emperor or local notables to acquire, justify, reconquer their social position. The epigraphic sources are the best vestiges of these sometimes extravagant liberalities.
Veyne rediscovers his passion for epigraphy, mixed with sociology and ethnology, since this investigation owes a lot to theEssay on Donation by Marcel Mauss. The subject of the complementary thesis indicates an undeniable interest in the history of art, which is confirmed by part of his bibliography. In addition to his prosaic reading of the frescoes of the Villa of the Mysteries, he offers, again recently, his Imaginary museum (2012), homage paid to the pictorial revelations of his Italian youth.
Assistant at the Sorbonne, he perseveres on the path of a history conforming to the precepts of the Annalswhere he published in 1961 a “ Life of Trimalcion », inspired by one of the main characters of the Satyricon by Petronius. This life is split: “ A Roman businessman dies, only to be resurrected as an imaginary aristocrat “. Petronius is reread in the light of Digest and certain inscriptions from the High Empire. We already find there all the charm of Veyne’s writings: the freedom of tone, the anthropological immersion in a very exotic Roman world, the parallels that are both surprising and educational, as when he writes that, “ for the Romans as for the Japanese today, love belonged to the domain of minor satisfactions and subjects of jokes, and was kept away from the circle of serious things, which included marital and family relationships. “.
Because Veyne possesses an immense analog talent, a propensity for luminous transhistorical connections: “ Westerners, or at least those among them who are not bacteriologists, believe in microbes and increase aseptic precautions for the same reason that the Azandé believe in sorcerers and increase magical precautions against them: they believe in confidence », he notes for example to make it clear to what extent ancient mythology did not need to be judged rational in order to exist.
This comic clash of eras and civilizations, thanks to which Chiron and Henri IV can meet, keeps curiosity perpetually awake. And Veyne has the appetite of the curious. Let us understand the astonishment faced with a bygone past. Having read in Pascal that it would be better not to leave his room, he said: “ We are not reasonable: we are curious about everything “.
Also Paul Veyne conducts his research in various directions for his own pleasure and for the benefit of his readers. His works are a celebration of thought, an art of deviating, of letting his pen run wild, giving a rare impression of intellectual freedom. Veyne has a habit of not sticking to his schedule, or rather exceeding it, which no one can blame him for. Reading one of his works gives the impression of welcoming into your home a distinguished guest, whose words are appreciated.
Rome, the empire of bribery »
Thus his work on epistemology, How we write history (1971), initially the introduction to his thesis, became an essay in itself, whose ideas proliferated without their author being able to contain them. They ended up forming one of the three or four reflections on the profession of historian which counted in the French historical science of XXe century. Their author’s statement is untimely: the story is stripped of its scientific pretensions, it is “ work of art “. This demystifying observation also reaches other human sciences, particularly sociology: the book ends significantly with the name of Max Weber.
By virtue of this familiarity with sociological texts, the young scholar, then teaching at the University of Aix, was spotted by Raymond Aron. Thanks to him, Veyne became a professor at the Collège de France in 1975. The title of the chair entrusted to him (“ History of Rome “) is deliberately wise, perhaps so as not to frighten the other professors of the College, accustomed to tidy and polished antiquities. But the break with Aron occurs without delay, from the inaugural lesson of Veyne, too little reverential and too little Aronian in any case. Indeed, Veyne failed to thank Aron…
His thesis on evergetism, The Bread and the Circusappeared the following year. The historian creates a broad portrait of Roman society, which predestined him to write in 1985 the chapter on Rome in theHistory of private life by Ariès and Duby. The study of euergetic practices constitutes a means of grasping Roman history from its reverse side: usually, specialists in Roman history are keen on military adventures, treaties and soldiery. Veyne, for his part, never dwelled on the springs of this “ Roman force », which has always found its admirers. On the contrary, he prefers to lift the veil on this Empire imposed by arms: “ It would be a poor understanding of the Roman Empire (…) to see in it a marvel of organization, rule of law and order. This empire was one of bribery and clientelism “.
Foucault’s sushi
At the end of the 1970s, he attended the “ living room » of Foucault, place of “ Nietzschean humanist evenings “. At this time, The World publishes a column from Veyne with the title “ The truth about my ascent of Fuji Yama », where we learn that, during the summer of 1978, this very respectable professor, truly passionate about mountaineering, did not go to Japan. On the other hand, he saw The Empire of the Senses five times, then forced Foucault to eat sushi…
Beneath the exterior of a troublemaker, Veyne tirelessly returned to his task: making the Greco-Roman world intelligible. This vast ambition does not prevent him from doubting: he is never certain of penetrating the mysteries of Antiquity, but has the great merit of showing how he approaches them: “ ‘The elegy, a deceptive work’, fallax opuswritten somewhere by Propertius ; we would give dearly to know what precisely he put behind this objective », he confides in his essay on The Roman erotic elegy (1983). Because Veyne never imposes his solutions, does not claim to have resolved once and for all the enigmas posed to the historian. In this, he acts contrary to Carcopino, who seized supposed “ secrets » of History (the abdication of Sulla, the IVe Eclogue of Virgil, the Roman basilica of the Major Gate) which he elucidated with forced arguments.
Paul Veyne’s heuristic therefore resembles a friendly and perilous conversation (as diplomacy can be). He lets the Elders speak, dialogues with them, presents them to his readers, seeks to reduce possible misunderstandings between them. In this situation of an intermediary torn between two worlds, the historian takes the risks that he reproaches himself for not having experienced in the battles of XXe century. Let us rest assured: Paul Veyne is not only a courageous historian, but a model of cheerful knowledge.