Gustave Glotz (17 February 1862, Haguenau,

Bas-Rhin Bas-Rhin (; Alsatian: ''Unterelsàss'', ' or '; traditional german: links=no, Niederrhein; en, Lower Rhine) is a department in Alsace which is a part of the Grand Est super-region of France. The name means 'Lower Rhine', referring to its low ...

– 16 April 1935,

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

) was a French historian of

ancient Greece Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of Classical Antiquity, classical antiquity ( AD 600), th ...

. He was a supporter of the theory that history never follows a simple, logical course. Glotz studied at 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, S ...

, and in 1885 received the agrégation d'histoire, a competitive examination in

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

designed to recruit teachers for secondary school positions. In 1907, he succeeded Paul Guiraud as professor of Greek history at the

Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...

. In 1920, he became a member of the

Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres The Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres () is a French learned society devoted to history, founded in February 1663 as one of the five academies of the Institut de France. The academy's scope was the study of ancient inscriptions (epigr ...

, and was named its president in 1928. His work on the economic history of Greece and the ancient Greek city is particularly noted. ''Le travail dans la Grèce ancienne'' (1920) is well known in the English translation ''Ancient Greece at Work'' (1926), as is his ''Cité Grecque'' (1928) as ''The Greek City and Its Institutions'' (1930). According to Glotz, the first humans to arrive in Greece were semi-nomadic shepherds from the

Balkans The Balkans ( ), also known as the Balkan Peninsula, is a geographical area in southeastern Europe with various geographical and historical definitions. The region takes its name from the Balkan Mountains that stretch throughout the who ...

. Their society was based on a patriarchal clan, whose members were all descendant from the same ancestor and all worshiped the same deity. Unions between several clans resulted in "fraternités", or armed groups. When faced with important undertakings, these groups would come together into a small number of tribes which were entirely independent in terms of religious, political, and militaristic views but which all recognized a supreme king, their chief. Glotz also distinguished between two phases of the ancient Greek city: an archaic era (1500-1400

BCE Common Era (CE) and Before the Common Era (BCE) are year notations for the Gregorian calendar (and its predecessor, the Julian calendar), the world's most widely used calendar era. Common Era and Before the Common Era are alternatives to the or ...

), corresponding to the

Minoan The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from 3500BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000BC, and then declining from 1450B ...

age, with the formation in Greece of the first urban centers, and a Doric age, roughly viewed as a Hellenic middle age, characterized by chaos and invasions. Only fortified cities and acropolises, capable of controlling the surrounding regions, survived this period. Glotz gives his name to the Centre Gustave Glotz, a group of researchers under the auspices of the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, the CNRS, and the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

References

* https://web.archive.org/web/20081119034431/http://www.espacestemps.net/document488.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Glotz, Gustave 1862 births 1935 deaths People from Haguenau École Normale Supérieure alumni 20th-century French historians Members of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres French male non-fiction writers