In the paper I try to reconstruct the main theoretical assumptions underlying Paul Veyne’s vision of the ancient world that are to be found in his book L’empire gréco-romain. First of all, recalling the opposition between two ways of making the past intelligible: “explication” versus “explicitation”, I show how the French historian uses that second type of historical analyse to reveal some ancient phenomena (i.e. “democracy”, “imperialism”, “soul”, “faith”) in their original and singular forms. Then, I pass to the question of causality and genesis in history. It seems that in Veyne’s book we can distinguish three different “models” of becoming: 1) “time of a project”, 2) “epigenesis” and 3) “discourse effectiveness”. All these fi ndings lead me to the conclusion that Veyne’s writing of history is essentially “essayistic”.