After being a schoolteacher, she became a professor atLille University and subsequently at theSorbonne, between 1957 and 1973. She later was promoted to the chair ofGreek and the development of moral and political thought at theCollège de France — the first woman nominated to this prestigious institution. In 1988, she was the second woman (afterMarguerite Yourcenar) to enter theAcadémie française, being elected to Chair #7, which was previously occupied byAndré Roussin.
She published dozens of works on Greek philosophy, language and literature but her lifelong passion wasThucydides, the historian of the Peloponnesian War.
Outside academia she was best known to the French public for touring French schools and giving talks about the culture of ancient Greeks. She was a staunch defender of teaching of humanities in French schools, believing that an understanding of the classics was essential to understanding democracy, the liberty of the individual and the virtue of tolerance.[5] In 1984 she published L’Enseignement en détresse, a book about declining standards in French schools.[6] Her position in theAcadémie française enabled her to mount a defence of classical languages and literary culture, which she stated “may well be as endangered as the fauna of the oceans or the water of our rivers”.[7]
She was horrified by the 1988 vote to simplify aspects of the French language in primary schools and in 1992 she founded an Association for the Defence of Literary Studies.[8]
De Romilly's two monographs on the ancient Greek historianThucydides have been credited with "alter[ing] the landscape of Thucydidean scholarship"[12] and "the beginning of a new era".[13] In 2002, Danish classical scholar Anders Holm Rasmussen described her views on Thucydides' ideology of empire as still "one of the most important viewpoints" with which modern scholars can engage.[14] Published first in 1956, her workHistoire et raison chez Thucydide is still in print in the original French today, and was translated into English asThe Mind of Thucydides after her death.[15][16] De Romilly believed that Thucydides's intelligent, reflective approach held lessons relevant to the Europe of today.
De Romilly also published outside the field ofGreek historiography. In recent years, the value of her workTime in Greek Tragedy has been recognized by scholars working not only onGreek drama but also onAristotle'smetaphysics of time.[17][18]
In 2016, Rosie Wyles andEdith Hall edited a volume calledWomen Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly, a history of pioneering women born between the Renaissance and 1913 who played significant roles in the history of classical scholarship.[19]
First woman professor at theCollège de France (Chair: Greece and the formation of the moral and political thought)
Corresponding member of foreign academies: Denmark, Great Britain, Vienna, Athens, Bavaria, the Netherlands, Naples, Turin, Genoa and the United States.
De Romilly's father, a philosophy professor, was killed in action in the First World War when De Romilly was only one year old. Her mother was a novelist who published under the nameJeanne Maxime-David.
In 1940 she married Michel de Romilly, a marriage that ended in divorce in the 1970s.[24]
A Short History of Greek Literature, translated by L. Doherty. Chicago, 1985.
The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens, translated by J. Lloyd. Oxford, 1991.
The Mind of Thucydides, translated by E. T. Rawlings. Cornell, 2012.
The Life of Alcibiades: Dangerous Ambition and the Betrayal of Athens, translated by Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings. Cornell, 2019.
Articles
"Thucydides and the Cities of the Athenian Empire", inBICS 13 (1966) 1–12.
"Phoenician Women of Euripides: Topicality in Greek Tragedy", translated by D. H. Orrok, inBucknell Review 15 (1967) 108–132.
"Fairness and Kindness in Thucydides", inPhoenix 28 (1974) 95–100.
"Plato and Conjuring", in K. V. Erickson (ed.),Plato: True and Sophistic Rhetoric. Amsterdam, 1979.
"Agamemnon in Doubt and Hesitation", in P. Pucci (ed.),Language and the Tragic Hero: Essays on Greek Tragedy in Honor of Gordon M. Kirkwood, 25–37. Atlanta, 1988.
"Isocrates and Europe", inGreece & Rome 39 (1992) 2–13.
^Webb, Ruth (2016). "Jacqueline de Romilly". In Wyles & Hall (ed.).Women classical scholars : unsealing the fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly'. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 377.ISBN9780198725206.
^Rijksbaron, Albert (2011). "Introduction". In Lalot; Rijksbaron; Jacquinod; Buijs (eds.).The historical present in Thucydides: semantics and narrative function'. Leiden: Brill. p. 1.
^Holm Rasmussen, Anders (2002). "Thucydides' Conception of the Peloponnesian War I. Imperialism".Classica et Mediaevalia.52: 85.
^Laurent, Régis (2015).An introduction to Aristotle's metaphysics of time : historical research into the mythological and astronomical conceptions that preceded Aristotle's philosophy. Paris: Villegagnons-Plaisance Editions. p. 53.ISBN9782953384611.
^Magnus, Erica W. (2016). "Time, Cognition, and Attic Performance: Tracing a New Approach to Theatre History's "Vexing Question"". In Gross, S.; Ostovich, S. (eds.).Time and Trace: Multidisciplinary Investigations of Temporality. Leiden: Brill.
