Pierre Lévêque (; 11 August 1921, in

Chambéry Chambéry (, , ; Arpitan: ''Chambèri'') is the prefecture of the Savoie department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of eastern France. The population of the commune of Chambéry was 58,917 as of 2019, while the population of the Chambér ...

– 5 March 2004, in Paris) was a 20th-century French historian of

ancient Ancient history is a time period from the History of writing, beginning of writing and recorded human history to as far as late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the Sumerian language, Sumerian c ...

and

Hellenistic Greece Hellenistic Greece is the historical period of the country following Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the annexation of the classical Greek Achaean League heartlands by the Roman Republic. This culminated ...

Biography

Training

The son of an engineer, he spent his youth in the port of

Bordeaux Bordeaux ( , ; Gascon oc, Bordèu ; eu, Bordele; it, Bordò; es, Burdeos) is a port city on the river Garonne in the Gironde department, Southwestern France. It is the capital of the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, as well as the prefectur ...

. Readin
''La Cité grecque''
by

Gustave Glotz Gustave Glotz (17 February 1862, Haguenau, Bas-Rhin – 16 April 1935, Paris) was a French historian of ancient Greece. He was a supporter of the theory that history never follows a simple, logical course. Glotz studied at the École normale ...

, pushed him towards literary studies: he was received in 1940 in the

École normale supérieure École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

de la rue d'Ulm then at the agrégation de lettres in 1944. A member of the

French School at Athens The French School at Athens (french: École française d’Athènes, EfA; el, Γαλλική Σχολή Αθηνών ''Gallikí Scholí Athinón'') is one of the seventeen foreign archaeological institutes operating in Athens, Greece. History ...

from 1947 to 1952, he studied in Greece archaic statuary of

Delos The island of Delos (; el, Δήλος ; Attic: , Doric: ), near Mykonos, near the centre of the Cyclades archipelago, is one of the most important mythological, historical, and archaeological sites in Greece. The excavations in the island are ...

and excavated the site of

Thasos Thasos or Thassos ( el, Θάσος, ''Thásos'') is a Greek island in the North Aegean Sea. It is the northernmost major Greek island, and 12th largest by area. The island has an area of and a population of about 13,000. It forms a separate re ...

. In 1955, under the direction of André Aymard, he defended his major thesis, dedicated to

Pyrrhus of Epirus Pyrrhus (; grc-gre, Πύρρος ; 319/318–272 BC) was a Greek king and statesman of the Hellenistic period.Plutarch. ''Parallel Lives'',Pyrrhus... He was king of the Greek tribe of Molossians, of the royal Aeacid house, and later he becam ...

- the minor one being dedicated to the Athenian poet

Agathon Agathon (; grc, Ἀγάθων; ) was an Athenian tragic poet whose works have been lost. He is best known for his appearance in Plato's ''Symposium,'' which describes the banquet given to celebrate his obtaining a prize for his first tragedy a ...

, under the direction of .

Works (selection)

Benoît-Édouard Loviot – Parthénon (détail)

*1961
''Nous partons pour... La Grèce''
*1964: ''L'aventure grecque'' *1964: ''Clisthène l'Athénien'', 1964 (with

Pierre Vidal-Naquet Pierre Emmanuel Vidal-Naquet (; 23 July 1930 – 29 July 2006) was a French historian who began teaching at the ''École des hautes études en sciences sociales'' (EHESS) in 1969. Vidal-Naquet was a specialist in the study of Ancient Greece, but ...

) 'Cleisthenes the Athenian: An Essay on the Representation of Space and of Time in Greek Political Thought from the End of the Sixth Century to the Death of Plato'', Humanities Press, 1996*1966
''Nous partons pour... La Sicile''
PUF *1966: *1968: ''Empires et barbaries'' *1985: ''Bêtes, dieux et hommes'' *1985: ''Le Japon des mythes anciens'' *1990: ''La Naissance de la Grèce : Des Rois aux Cités'', collection «

Découvertes Gallimard (, ; in United Kingdom: ''New Horizons'', in United States: ''Abrams Discoveries'') is an editorial collection of illustrated monographic books published by the Éditions Gallimard in pocket format. The books are concise introductions to pa ...

» (nº 86), série Histoire. Paris: Gallimard, 176pp., **1994: **1994: *1994: ''Les Grenouilles dans l'Antiquité'' *2003: ''Dans les pas des dieux grecs''

External links

Pierre Lévêque
on data.bnf.fr
''Hommage à Pierre Lévêque''
o
Kernos

''Souvenirs du vingtième siècle''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leveque, Pierre 20th-century French historians French hellenists École Normale Supérieure alumni Members of the French School at Athens 1921 births Writers from Chambéry 2004 deaths