September 15, 2000 marked the 70th anniversary of the outstanding scientist, member of the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres Claude Nicolet. His contribution to the study of the history of ancient Rome is so great that without his classical works (first of all, "The Craft of the citizen in Republican Rome", "Rome and the conquest of the Mediterranean world", "The Equestrian class in the Republican era"), it is impossible to imagine modern antiquity, as well as without "Roman state Law". Theodor Mommsen. If today we have a better understanding of the minutest details of the Roman state mechanism than ever before, this is due in no small part to Claude Nicolet, who for decades tirelessly explored the most intricate issues related to this topic, based on a deep insight into sources - both written and epigraphic (it is enough to mention only with what attention he read and reread Titus Livy and Cicero, or returned again and again to the Table of Heraclea or the Tariff of Ephesus).

Claude Nicolet was a professor at the Sorbonne, from 1981 to 1992 he headed the Glotz Center at the University of Paris-1, and then became director of the French School in Rome. For a number of years, he led the work of the research group: "The functioning of the political and social systems of the Roman and Hellenistic world "(within the framework of the National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS), which is still often called "equipe Nicolet". In particular, he offered his colleagues the research program "Lost Memory", aimed at studying the private and public archives of ancient Rome and their role in various spheres of life of the Roman civil community and public administration. The first results of this collective work were published in the collections " La memoire perdue. A la recherche des archives oubliees, publiques et privees, de la Rome antique" (P., 1994) и "La memoire perdue. Recherches sur l' administration romaine" (Rome, 1998).

It is no exaggeration to say that Claude Nicolet has two passions: books and the history of political ideas. A few years ago, when he left the post of director of the French School in Rome, he said that in the Farnese Palace he had one privilege-to sleep among books. And now, in retirement, he goes almost daily to the French Academy building on the Quai de Conti to study at the Mazarin Library, even though he doesn't know what to do.

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his own apartment looks more like an excellent library than anything else. In books - old and new, French and foreign, and above all German-he now seeks answers to the questions that always concern him about the fate of nation-states in Europe, trying to understand the current development of the French Republic dear to him and hoping to influence its future. Most recently, his new book was published: "History, Nation, Republic "(R., 2000).

Nor does he leave behind his antiquarian studies. This is evidenced by the collection of his articles " Censors and Publishers. Economics and taxation in ancient Rome " (R., 2000).

Claude Nicolet was one of the first foreign scientists who, at the very beginning of a new era in the history of our country, began to establish effective international cooperation. In 1989, he came to Moscow to give several lectures and get acquainted with our anti-historians (but in Leningrad he also found time to visit the Public Library, where books from the Voltaire and Diderot libraries are kept). In the following years, he did a lot to make the first Franco-Russian project - "Updating the subject and methods of research in Hellenistic and Roman history" - a reality. On April 29, 1994, he became a doctor honoris causa of the Institute of Universal History (see VDI. 1994. N 4. pp. 215-216), and in 1997 he again visited Moscow at a conference dedicated to the anniversary of the Vestnik Drevnoi Istorii.

The editorial board and editorial board of the Bulletin of Ancient History, the Center for Comparative Studies of Ancient Civilizations sincerely congratulate Claude Nicolet on his 70th birthday and wish him good health and new scientific achievements.

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