A meeting organized by Dario Mantovani, Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge and John Scheid.
In the mid-70s, the titles of the professorships at the Collège de France no longer had the generic, repetitive character of their predecessors. It took a certain audacity to announce a " History of Rome ", something that Paul Veyne, elected in 1975, was certainly not lacking in. Nor did he lack the broad-spectrum curiosity that led him to take an interest in almost every field of knowledge on Greco-Roman antiquity, fertilizing them with the methods of the social sciences.
This original scholar, who never wanted to be a schoolboy, did not like tributes, and it is not in this agreed sense that the day of December 10, 2024 will be held. Instead, we'll be looking at the circumstances surrounding his election, the issues he addressed in his lectures and seminars at the Collège de France, the way in which he saw himself as part of the institution, and the work he carried out there for almost a quarter of a century (1976-1999).