BLOCH, GUSTAVE

BLOCH, GUSTAVE (1858–1923), French scholar in Roman history. He was deeply influenced by his grandfather, Rabbi Alexandre Aron. Bloch taught at the lycée in Besançon until 1873, when he joined the new Académie Française in Rome. He was so successful there that he was invited to lecture on Greco-Roman antiquities at Lyons University. While at Lyons he received his doctorate for two brilliant theses: Les origines du Sénat romain and De decretis functorum magistratuum ornamentis (1883). In 1888 Bloch was named maître des conférences at the École Normale in Paris, and established his reputation firmly by a series of articles in learned journals and in the classical encyclopedia of Daremberg and Saglio as well as la Gaule indépendante et la Gaule romaine (1900) in the Histoire de France edited by Lavisse. In 1904 the post of professor of Roman history was created for him at the Sorbonne. Bloch placed all these honors in jeopardy as an active supporter of dreyfus . -BIBLIOGRAPHY: R. Lisbonne, in: Revue Historique, 145 (1924), 156; Gustave Bloch (a pamphlet published on his death). (Howard L. Adelson)