Histoire des Romains (Victor Duruy)

Overview

Histoire des Romains by the historian and Minister of Public Instruction under Napoleon III, Victor Duruy (1811-1894), grew from his earlier Histoire romaine into a standard narrative of Rome from its origins to the end of the Empire. Hachette published the large illustrated edition, "depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu'à l'invasion des Barbares", in seven quarto volumes between 1879 and 1885, with some 2,500 engravings after antique monuments, maps and chromolithographs (library and dealer records; the volumes were issued in instalments, livraisons, before they were bound). Volume contents: I origins to the end of the Second Punic War; II Zama to the First Triumvirate; III Caesar and the beginnings of Augustus; IV Augustus to Hadrian; V Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius and Roman society; VI Commodus to Diocletian; VII Constantine to Theodosius.

Marie and Duruy

Marie subscribed to the instalments. "La grande histoire de Duruy qui paraît par livraisons est un trésor," she writes (082.0441).

• 23 September 1878 (082.0441): wondering whether she will really become a painter, she reads Roman history "à gravures, notes, cartes géographiques, textes, traductions", on the early institutions, "le nombre des citoyens sous Tullus Hostilius, des rites sacrés de Numa, des luttes des tribuns et des consuls", and compares Roman scandals to the Chamber of Deputies.
• 6 October 1878 (082.0555): "Ayant lu trois livraisons de 'L'Histoire Romaine' de Duruy..."
• 26 October 1878 (083.0053): "deux livraisons de Duruy" in a day with five newspapers and Candide.
• 1 April 1879 (084.0588): "la livraison de Duruy lue" is one item in a day of harp lesson and other reading.
• 25 November 1879 (086.0584): in her description of her new studio-study the latest "livraisons parues de 'l'Histoire Romaine' de Duruy" lie on the desk with Montesquieu, Plato and Plutarch, "de la haute pédanterie qui m'amuse et m'intéresse".

Notes and doubts

• The project's inventory gave the dates 1843-1876 for the work as a whole (Duruy's earlier Histoire romaine, then the octavo Histoire des Romains of the 1870s). The subscription Marie describes in 1878-79 matches the illustrated Hachette edition, whose first volume is dated 1879 (the project has not found another Duruy work issued in instalments in those years). The volume-by-volume details above come from library and dealer records and have not been checked against a physical set.
• The existing glossary stub `people/mentioned/DURUY.md` is the author (it also carries the tags for the Minister of Public Instruction at 083.0463); this entry is the work.

Sources

• Catawiki, Gazette Drouot and Canadian Centre for Architecture library records for the Hachette Histoire des Romains (7 vols, 1879-1885, illustrated edition), as returned by a web search on 2026-10-10.
• Internet Archive scans listed under `full_text`.