MARIE

See also:

• LOUIS
• LOUIS (804–876)
• LOUIS (893–911)
• LOUIS, JOSEPH DOMINIQUE, BARON (1755-1837)
• LOUIS, or LEWIS (from the Frankish Chlodowich, Chlodwig, Latinized as Chlodowius, Lodhuwicus, Lodhuvicus, whence-in the Strassburg oath of 842-0. Fr. Lodhuwigs, then Chlovis, Loys and later Louis, whence Span. Luiz and—through the Angevin kings—Hungarian

LOUIS

See also:

• ANTOINE, ANDRE (1858- )

ANTOINE GASTON

See also:

• MARIE LOUIS ANTOINE GASTON BOISSIER (1823—1908)

BOISSIER (1823—1908)  , . French classical scholar, and secretary of the French Academy, was born at Nimes on the 15th of August 1823 . 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 Angouleme, 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 Lycee Charlemagne . He began his literary career by a thesis on the poet Attius (1857) and a study on the life and work of M . Terentius Varro (1861) . In 1861 he was made professor of Latin oratory at the College de France, and he became an active contributor to the Revue des deux monde's . In 1865 he published Ciceron et ses amis (Eng. trans. by A . D . 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 Antonin (2 vols.), in which he analysed the great religious movement of antiquity that preceded the acceptance of Christianity . In L'Opposition sous les CCsars (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 H . J . G . Patin, the author of Etudes sur les tragiques grecs, in 1876, he was elected a member of the French Academy, of which he was appointed perpetual secretary in 1895 . His later works. include Promenades archeologiques: Rome et Pompei (188o; second series, 1886); L'Afrique romaine, promenades archeologiques (190,); La Fin du paganisme (2 vols., 1891); Le Conjuration de Catilina (19o5); Tacite (1903, Eng, trans. by W . G . 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 Sevigne (1887) and Saint-Simon (1892) . He died in June 1go8 .