From Historia Magistra Vitae to History as Empirical Experimentation of Progress Chryssanthi Avlami “Ce seroit un grand malheur, si on se lassoit d’étudier les Grecs et les Romains; l’histoire de ces deux peuples est une grande école de morale et de politique: on n’y voit pas seulement jusqu’où peuvent s’élever les vertus et les talents des hommes sous les lois d’un sage gouvernement; leurs fautes mêmes serviront éternellement de leçons aux hommes.”¹ “L’on méconnaît les temps, les nations et les époques; et l’on applique aux modernes ce qui n’était praticable qu’à une ère différente de l’esprit humain.”² e Revolutionary Rift Ancient history was not particularly in season in post-revolutionary France. In fact, if we leave aside new editions of eighteenth-century histories, transla- tions from English and German, and scholarly manuals, we are left with two general histories of the Greek world. e first of these was the result of a universal history project of the Hachette publishing house. is history, by Victor Duruy, who was then teaching at the Lycée Saint-Louis, was first published in . Its two subsequent editions³ marked the career of the author, who became General Inspector of Secondary Education (–) during the Empire, went on to take the position of Minister of Public Educa- tion (–), and finally became a member of the Academy. e second 1 “It would be a great misfortune, if one were to grow weary of studying the Greeks and the Romans; the history of these two peoples is a great school of morals and politics: we not only see how, under the laws of a good government, the virtues and talents of men can be elevated; even their faults will always serve as a lesson to men.” Mably, Observations sur l’histoire de la Grèce, ou des causes de la prospérité et des malheurs des Grecs () (Paris, ), vii–viii. 2 “People misunderstand times, nations, and epochs; and they apply to modern societies what was practicable only in a different era of the human spirit.” Benjamin Constant, Principes de politique (– version), ed. Etienne Hofmann (Paris, ), –. 3 Victor Duruy, Histoire grecque (Paris, ); idem, Histoire de la Grèce ancienne,  vols. (Paris, ); idem, Histoire des Grecs, depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à la réduction de la Grèce en province romaine,  vols. (Paris, –).