What do you think?
Rate this book
Quand les dieux rôdaient sur la Terre
Zeus, Aphrodite, Athéna, Dionysos, Apollon...Tous les secrets des Dieux et des Déesses qui rôdaient autrefois sur la Terre.
Pierre Judet de La Combe nous fait voyager à travers les nombreux mythes de la mythologie : histoires merveilleuses, invraisemblables, inattendues. Un livre pour revivre l’expérience de ce monde ancien et surprenant, où l’Océan, les Fleuves, le Soleil ne sont pas des éléments désincarnés, mais s’adressent aux habitants de la Terre, où les puissances invisibles qui décident des vies et des sociétés humaines descendent de l’Olympe ou surgissent des entrailles de la terre ou de la mer pour se montrer, parler et s'affronter aux humains.
Pierre Judet de La Combe, helléniste, directeur d’études émérite à l’EHESS et directeur de recherche émérite au CNRS, est le créateur de l’émission éponyme sur France Inter qui rassemble chaque semaine plus d’un million et demi d’auditeurs et dont ce livre est l’adaptation.
Pierre Judet de La Combe nous fait voyager à travers les nombreux mythes de la mythologie : histoires merveilleuses, invraisemblables, inattendues. Un livre pour revivre l’expérience de ce monde ancien et surprenant, où l’Océan, les Fleuves, le Soleil ne sont pas des éléments désincarnés, mais s’adressent aux habitants de la Terre, où les puissances invisibles qui décident des vies et des sociétés humaines descendent de l’Olympe ou surgissent des entrailles de la terre ou de la mer pour se montrer, parler et s'affronter aux humains.
Pierre Judet de La Combe, helléniste, directeur d’études émérite à l’EHESS et directeur de recherche émérite au CNRS, est le créateur de l’émission éponyme sur France Inter qui rassemble chaque semaine plus d’un million et demi d’auditeurs et dont ce livre est l’adaptation.
- GenresMythology
608 pages, Paperback
Published December 31, 2024
28 people are currently reading
267 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 15, 2025
Excellent essai à la fois facile, sérieux et précis sur la mythologie grecque. Il s'agit de raconter les histoires des dieux, des mortels et des villes. Chaque chapitre cite de très nombreux extraits d’œuvres de l'époque et aussi de simples maigres morceaux de papyrus retrouvés parfois assez récemment. L'auteur nous donne bien sûr les différentes versions de la même histoire.
Le seul reproche que je ferais est que le texte est tiré de ce qui a servi à raconter la chose sur France Inter et que, du coup, il y a des redites au début de chaque chapitre (nécessaires sans doute à la radio) qui allongent un peu la sauce pour pas grand chose.
Le seul reproche que je ferais est que le texte est tiré de ce qui a servi à raconter la chose sur France Inter et que, du coup, il y a des redites au début de chaque chapitre (nécessaires sans doute à la radio) qui allongent un peu la sauce pour pas grand chose.
April 27, 2025
I have always been under the spell of Greek mythology. As soon as I could read, I took to marvelling at its wonderful tales, and when I was old enough to put two and two together, I soon realised that these tales actually paint an accurate and thorough portray of human nature.
Of course, if you are not familiar with it, you might find it awfully confusing and overcomplicated. The ancient Greeks themselves did not always agreed on what they were telling. For example, Homer claims Aphrodite's father is Zeus, but Hesiod has another tale to tell, a version whitout which we would not enjoy Boticelli's famous painting today!... But for the Greeks of then, such discrepancies did not matter. What mattered was how the story was told in order to reach a conclusion that everyone in the audience already knew all about. In other words, you had to be a gifted storyteller, a heck of a performer, a poet no less, inspired and guided by the Muses.
In this remarkable compundium, Pierre Judet de La Combe offers us a sharp, insightful take on a wide collection of inspiring fables. His scholarly command of the Greek language gives us the keys to open doors we would otherwise have passed by unawares. He makes us understand that in most cases, each deity is oftentimes an association of the opposites (just like a human would be!), that each single one god depends on other gods to fully achieve divine potential. There are even times when the divine simply cannot fulfil itself whitout humans pitching in, willingly or not!
Nothing is ever black or white in Greek mythology. For example, Zeus is virility (machism some would say) incarnate. Yet he gives birth to Athena, some sort of cross-dresser of a daughter as she comes to eternal life as a beautiful woman in her prime and in full military garb, at a time when war was a man's world, only! Makes you wonder, does it not?
As for me, just like La Combe, the story I like most is this comical monkey business between Hermes and his half-brother Apollo, when the shrewd theft of fifty cows by the former leads to the invention of fire, the set-up of ritual sacrifices, and subsequently the art of playing the lyre vested in the latter! There is really so much food for thought in this.
Nevertheless, in sharp contrast, there is a whole lot of tales you can't make heads or tails of. But why would that be a surprise? If, as I'm sure it is, this is the descrpition of our deep nature, with all its complexity and insanity, then it fits the bill!
All of this is pleasantly wriiten, savvy and funny. How I wish the gods were still prowling on the earth!
Of course, if you are not familiar with it, you might find it awfully confusing and overcomplicated. The ancient Greeks themselves did not always agreed on what they were telling. For example, Homer claims Aphrodite's father is Zeus, but Hesiod has another tale to tell, a version whitout which we would not enjoy Boticelli's famous painting today!... But for the Greeks of then, such discrepancies did not matter. What mattered was how the story was told in order to reach a conclusion that everyone in the audience already knew all about. In other words, you had to be a gifted storyteller, a heck of a performer, a poet no less, inspired and guided by the Muses.
In this remarkable compundium, Pierre Judet de La Combe offers us a sharp, insightful take on a wide collection of inspiring fables. His scholarly command of the Greek language gives us the keys to open doors we would otherwise have passed by unawares. He makes us understand that in most cases, each deity is oftentimes an association of the opposites (just like a human would be!), that each single one god depends on other gods to fully achieve divine potential. There are even times when the divine simply cannot fulfil itself whitout humans pitching in, willingly or not!
Nothing is ever black or white in Greek mythology. For example, Zeus is virility (machism some would say) incarnate. Yet he gives birth to Athena, some sort of cross-dresser of a daughter as she comes to eternal life as a beautiful woman in her prime and in full military garb, at a time when war was a man's world, only! Makes you wonder, does it not?
As for me, just like La Combe, the story I like most is this comical monkey business between Hermes and his half-brother Apollo, when the shrewd theft of fifty cows by the former leads to the invention of fire, the set-up of ritual sacrifices, and subsequently the art of playing the lyre vested in the latter! There is really so much food for thought in this.
Nevertheless, in sharp contrast, there is a whole lot of tales you can't make heads or tails of. But why would that be a surprise? If, as I'm sure it is, this is the descrpition of our deep nature, with all its complexity and insanity, then it fits the bill!
All of this is pleasantly wriiten, savvy and funny. How I wish the gods were still prowling on the earth!
December 29, 2025
Super intéressant carrément ça m'a donné envie de lire une vieille tragédie grecque ce qui est rare et mtn j'ai besoin de relire Antigone d'anouillh parce que toutes les excuses sont bonnes <33
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews