Revue des Études Anciennes

Revue des Études Anciennes
Title	Revue des Études Anciennes
Language	French
Discipline	Classics
Abbreviation	RÉA
Publisher	Société des Études Latines
Country	France
History	1899–present
Frequency	Quarterly

Revue des Études Anciennes.

Founded at the turn of the 20th century, the journal became a principal French periodical for the study of Ancient Rome, Classical Greece, Hellenistic period, Late Antiquity, Byzantine Empire, and related literatures and inscriptions. Its pages have hosted scholarship engaging with primary authors such as Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Euripides, Herodotus, and Thucydides, and with material cultures represented by finds from Pompeii, Ostia Antica, Delphi, and Pergamon.

History

The journal was established in Paris amid contemporary debates involving institutions like the École Normale Supérieure, the Collège de France, the Société des Antiquaires de France, and the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and it reflected the influence of figures associated with those institutions as well as collections such as the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and the Musée du Louvre. Early editors drew on networks that included scholars from the University of Paris, the Sorbonne, the École Française de Rome, and the École Française d'Athènes, and engaged with contemporaneous projects like the publication of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum and the formation of catalogues for the Musée National du Moyen Âge. Twentieth-century episodes in the journal intersected with events affecting intellectual life, including the repercussions of the Franco-Prussian War on French universities, the impact of World War I on archaeological missions, the reorganization of research under the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, and the disruptions of World War II and the Vichy regime for academic exchange. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, editorial boards incorporated specialists connected to departments at Université de Strasbourg, Université de Lyon, Université de Bordeaux, and Université de Lille, and the journal adjusted to shifts introduced by digital initiatives at institutions such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Scope and Content

The journal publishes articles spanning philology, textual criticism, epigraphy, papyrology, numismatics, archaeology, and intellectual history, engaging with sources ranging from manuscripts in the Vatican Library to inscriptions catalogued in the British Museum and coins studied at the Numismatic Society of London. Contributions analyze works of authors including Cicero, Seneca, Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Homeric Hymns, Sappho, Aeschylus, Menander, Strabo, and Cassius Dio, and address material evidence from sites like Herculaneum, Knossos, Ephesus, and Athens. The journal has carried editions, commentaries, and critical notes on texts such as the Suda, papyri recovered by the Oxyrhynchus Papyri project, and hitherto neglected inscriptions from provincial Roman contexts like Lugdunum and Trier. It also features discussions connecting ancient sources to reception in the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and modern literature and art, citing interactions with figures like Montaigne, Rabelais, Goethe, and Nietzsche.

Editorial Structure and Publication

The editorial board has traditionally combined university professors, curators from museums such as the Musée du Louvre and the Musée de Cluny, and researchers affiliated with national bodies including the CNRS and the INHA. Issues are organized into articles, short notes, critical editions, reviews, and bibliographical notices, and the journal follows peer-review practices that involve external referees connected to departments at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, the Harvard University, and the University of Chicago. The publication rhythm has been quarterly with occasional special issues on themes like Roman Law, Greek Tragedy, Hellenistic Rulers, and Late Antique Christianity, and it has produced conference proceedings tied to meetings of the Society for Classical Studies and workshops at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. Production involves collaboration with printing houses in Paris and the cataloguing of issues in library systems such as WorldCat and the holdings of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève.

Notable Contributors and Articles

Over its history the journal has published work by prominent scholars who also served at institutions including the École Normale Supérieure, the University of Bologna, the University of Padua, the University of Munich, and the University of Vienna. Contributors and subjects appearing in its pages include studies by or about Theodor Mommsen, Émile Benveniste, Paul Veyne, Jacques Heurgon, Maurice Bowra, Gilbert Murray, Eduard Meyer, Franz Cumont, Paul Friedländer, Jean-Pierre Vernant, Henri-Irénée Marrou, Albert Grenier, Fernand Braudel, Arnaldo Momigliano, Ernst Badian, Robin Lane Fox, Mary Beard, Ian Morris, E. R. Dodds, Georges Dumézil, André Dacier, Antoine Meillet, Jean Aubert, and Pierre Wuilleumier. Notable articles have included critical editions of Latin inscriptions, philological reassessments of Homeric passages, reinterpretations of Augustine of Hippo's texts, and archaeological reports on excavations at Cluny Abbey, Saintes, and provincial sites in Gaul.

Reception and Impact

Scholars have cited the journal for its authoritative editions, for advancing debates over textual transmission associated with figures like Origen and Eusebius, and for methodological contributions to the study of provincial Roman archaeology exemplified by work on Roman Britain, Hispania Tarraconensis, North Africa, and Asia Minor. Reviews in other periodicals such as the Journal of Roman Studies, the Classical Review, and the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique have noted its importance for francophone scholarship, while anglophone and deutschsprachige historians and classicists at institutions such as the Institute for Advanced Study and the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have engaged with its output. Its impact extends to museum exhibitions at the British Museum, the Pergamon Museum, and the Musée du Louvre, and to curriculum readings at universities including Columbia University, Princeton University, and Université de Montréal.

Indexing and Availability

The journal is indexed in bibliographic databases and catalogues maintained by the Bibliothèque nationale de France, WorldCat, the ISTEX platform, and major university libraries across Europe and North America, and older volumes are conserved in archives such as the collections of the Bibliothèque Mazarine and the periodicals rooms of the British Library. Libraries holding complete runs include the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Bodleian Library, the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, and the holdings of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and selected issues have been digitized in collaboration with institutional digitization programs at the École Française d'Athènes and the École Française de Rome.

Category:French academic journals Category:Classical studies journals