Maurice Sartre. L’historien et ses territoires. Choix d'articles

Facing the time and space opening to him, the Historian specialising in Greek and Roman Ancient Times is compelled to make choices. Those are oriented through readings, journeys, meetings, the magic of some words, coincidental discoveries or propositions. Maurice Sartre, thus, focused on the Greeks rather than the Romans, the East rather than the West, the surroundings of the Hellenistic world rather than its Aegean and Balkan centre. This also led to chronological choices, the world originating from the Conquest of Alexander the Great until it tumbled from Christianity to Islam. Another choice again prevailed: that of epigraphy as a favourite means to write History and find new issues. 

The articles of Maurice Sartre which are here collected illustrate the variety of approaches, of locations and periods. Syrian epigraphy has a prevailing position but the necessity of teaching and the taste for synthesis that he develops often lead to broaden the discussion, to leave the Syrian framework behind so as to open to other Eastern Mediterranean territories, to give new thoughts about the great political, social, economic or cultural issues of the Greek and Hellenised societies.