Paul Veyne is a literary historian of Roman and Greek antiquity, born in 1930, professor at the College de France. He recounts snippets of his life, from his Southern childhood, until recent years. The book of 260 pages is pleasantly bed. Some passages are touching, such as those on his youth and his relationship with his grandmother, others leave colder, such as those on his election to the College de France. Several times he evokes illustrious figures like Aron, Barthes and Althusser. The book mentions two true passions that his writing makes it rather badly, as it is quite flat: Roman low reliefs and mountain. The second, the later is particularly bad development. I had never even read a mountain enthusiast talk about as bad! The autobiography is peppered considerations on ancient writing, but also a personal philosophy that sometimes Hair-raising. This is particularly the case when talking about his experience of ecstasy to which he gives a physical amazement content. The final chapters appear moved relative to the rest of the book, as they describe in a hurry his family disappointments, which we must admit is rather gratin. We had to either ignore them or devote a real place. Finally, we must emphasize that throughout the book Veyne struggles to impersonate a Lunar character and uninteresting: a kind of stowaway of life, less interested in his contemporaries as by the Roman low reliefs. At the end it becomes pathetic, but it's absolutely not credible especially for a person who was a member of the PCF, then carrying suitcases during the war of Algeria. In total it appears rather perplexed the book, we do not know why he got the Prix Femina, test category.
