« L’ombre de Brutus » : l’action politique de Gaston d’Orléans et les valeurs de « l’ancienne Rome »

Abstract

True to the memorialists and satirists of the seventeenth century, contemporary historiography generally assesses Gaston d’Orléans’s political activities of the 1630s with reference to ‘ancient Rome’s’ republican values, celebrated by Balzac and Corneille. However, the successive translations of Tacitus by Rodolphe Le Maistre (Gaston’s physician and pedagogue from 1615 to 1636) permit a better understanding of the respective actions and political positions of both the king and his brother in relation to contemporary Tacitist culture.

Keywords

• Orléans (Gaston d’)
• Le Maistre (Rodolphe)
• Tacitus
• translation
• Tacitism
• ancient Rome