Created at the Collège de France assembly ofFebruary25,1973, the chair entitled " Greece and the formation of moral and political thought " was intended to address the genius of the Greek people, who are said to have given man confidence in his reason, the Greece that " created most of the notions that are still ours " and whose "example and heritage " are the subject of the teaching proposed at the time. This presentation, preserved in the archives of the Collège de France, corresponded perfectly to the approach taken by Jacqueline de Romilly, who would be elected a few months later. The renowned Hellenist perfectly represented the classical tradition of a philology that made the study of Greek antiquity the experience of a culture all the more fascinating because it was supposed to have forged our modernity. Her courses developed the theme of political and moral ideas considered to have been forged by the Greeks. For a decade, Jacqueline de Romilly proposed a study of ancient Greece faithful to the heritage of classical and erudite humanism, focusing on the familiarity of a past conceived as the matrix of the present.