Jean-Jacques Barthélemy

Jean-Jacques Barthélemy (born Jan. 20, 1716, Cassis, France—died April 30, 1795, Paris) was a French archaeologist and author whose novel about ancient Greece was one of the most widely read books in 19th-century France.

Barthélemy studied theology with the Jesuits and became an abbé, but, feeling that he lacked a religious vocation, he went to Paris, where he became interested in Greek and Roman antiquities. In 1744 he became assistant to the keeper of the royal collection of medals, whom he succeeded in 1753. In 1755 he accompanied the French ambassador, the Count de Stainville (later the Duke de Choiseul) to Italy, where he spent three years in archaeological research.

Barthélemy wrote several technical works on archaeology, but his fame rests on the novel Voyage du jeune Anacharsis en Grèce, dans le milieu du quatrième siècle avant l’ère vulgaire (1788; Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece), a rambling account by an aged Scythian of a journey through Greece that he had taken as a young man for the sake of his education. Into this book, set in the 4th century bc, Barthélemy poured the fruit of a lifetime’s scholarship and research, using his wealth of learning to describe the laws, government, religion, philosophy, art, and antiquities of ancient Greece. This well-documented introduction to Hellenic culture rekindled interest in Greece (although some of its claims have since been disproved), and it provided suitable reading for generations of French schoolchildren. Barthélemy’s merits as a writer and scholar were recognized by his election to the French Academy in 1789.