Marie-Louis-Antoine-Gaston Boissier

Gaston Boissier Marie-Louis-Antoine-Gaston Boissier (15 August 1823 – 20 November 1908), French classical scholar, and secretary of the Académie française, was born at Nîmes.

The Roman monuments of his native town very early attracted Gaston Boissier to the study of ancient history. He made epigraphy his particular theme, and at the age of twenty-three became a professor of rhetoric at the University of Angoulême, where he lived and worked for ten years without further ambition. A travelling inspector of the university, however, happened to hear him lecture, and Boissier was called to Paris to be professor at the Lycée Charlemagne.

He began his literary career by a thesis on the poet Attius (1857) and a study on the life and work of Marcus Terentius Varro (1861). In 1861 he was made professor of Latin oratory at the Collège de France, and he became an active contributor to the ''Revue des deux mondes''. In 1865 he published ''Cicéron et ses amis'' (Eng. trans. by AD Jones, 1897), which has enjoyed a success such as rarely falls to the lot of a work of erudition. In studying the manners of ancient Rome, Boissier had learned to re-create its society and to reproduce its characteristics with exquisite vivacity.

In 1874 he published ''La Religion romaine d'Auguste aux Antonins'' (2 vols.), in which he analysed the great religious movement of antiquity that preceded the acceptance of Christianity. In ''L'Opposition sous les Césars'' (1875) he drew a remarkable picture of the political decadence of Rome under the early successors of Augustus. By this time Boissier had drawn to himself the universal respect of scholars and men of letters, and on the death of HJG Patin, the author of ''Études sur les tragiques grecs'', in 1876, he was elected a member of the Académie française, of which he was appointed perpetual secretary in 1895.

His later works include ''Promenades archéologiques: Rome et Pompei'' (1880; second series, 1886); ''L'Afrique romaine, promenades archéologiques'' (1901); ''La Fin du paganisme'' (2 vols, 1891); ''La Conjuration de Catilina'' (1905); ''Tacite'' (1903, Eng, trans. by WG Hutchison, 1906). He was a representative example of the French talent for lucidity and elegance applied with entire seriousness to weighty matters of literature. Though he devoted himself mainly to his great theme, the reconstruction of the elements of Roman society, he also wrote monographs on ''Madame de Sévigné'' (1887) and ''Saint-Simon'' (1892). He died in June 1908. Provided by Wikipedia
Showing 1 - 20 results of 139 for search 'Boissier, Gaston', query time: 0.05s Refine Results
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    <<The>> country of Horace and Virgil by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1896
    Book
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    Lifvet och sederna under romerska kejsardömet / by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1868
    Book
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    Etude sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. T. Varron. by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1861
    Book
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    Cicéron et ses amis : étude sur la société romaine du temps de César / by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1888
    Book
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    Nouvelles proménades archéologiques. : Horace et Virgile. by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1886
    Book
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    La religion romain d'Auguste aux Antonins. by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1878
    Book
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    Cicero och hans vänner : romerskt samhällsliv på Caesars tid / by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1915
    Book
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    Cicéron et ses amis étude sur la société romaine du temps de César by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1899
    Book
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    Cicéron et ses amis étude sur la société romaine du temps de César by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1874
    Book
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    Cicéron et ses amis étude sur la société Romaine du temps de César by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1941
    Book
  16. 16

    Tacitus and other Roman studies by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1906
    Book
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    <<L'>> Afrique romaine promenades archéologiques en Algérie et en Tunisie by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1895
    Book
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    Promenades archéologiques Rome et Pompéi by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1880
    Book
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    Étude sur la vie et les ouvrages de M. T. Varron by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1861
    Book
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    Mme de Sevigne by Boissier, Gaston

    Published 1887
    Book