With the Hellenist Jacqueline de Romilly disappears one of the great minds of our time. His knowledge, his penetration of the Greek world and culture were so profound, so complete, so intimate that they had earned him, in addition to the greatest academic titles and honours, to receive in 1995 the Greek nationality and to be, a few years later, in 2001, appointed Ambassador of Hellenism.
The first woman to enter the Collège de France, and also the second to be elected to the Académie française, Jacqueline de Romilly will have kept until the end of her almost centenary existence, the same enthusiasm, the same passion, the same tireless energy to defend not only the teaching of Greek and Latin but also that of our language. She wanted the new generations to continue to have a rich and diversified language, to keep the meaning of the right word, on which depends the quality and correctness of the thought itself.
Jacqueline de Romilly, a master of the "humanities" she had taught for so long, was herself the humanist par excellence. Her knowledge of the past made her an eminently contemporary woman. It made us taste with incomparable talent the beauties of a thought and an art that are at the origin of European civilization. In this way, it helped us to better envision our future.