The Ancient City - Imperium Press: A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome

by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, Dennis Bouvard (Foreword by)

Overview

In The Ancient City, Fustel de Coulanges hands us the skeleton key unlocking classical civilization—the Indo-European domestic cult—showing this archaic religion to be the engine behind the rise and fall of the classical world.

In his foreword, Dennis Bouvard views The Ancient City through the lens of generative anthropology, pointing the way to a post-liberal understanding of our own social order, informed by the imperative order described by Fustel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780648690559
Publisher:	Imperium Press
Publication date:	02/27/2020
Series:	Traditionalist Histories
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	366
File size:	3 MB

Table of Contents

Foreword

INTRODUCTION.

The Necessity of Studying the Earliest Beliefs of the Ancients in Order to Understand Their Institutions

BOOK FIRST.

Ancient Beliefs.

I. Notions About the Soul and Death

II. The Worship of the Dead

III. The Sacred Fire

IV. The Domestic Religion

BOOK SECOND.

The Family.

I. Religion was the Constituent Principle of the

Ancient Family

II. Marriage

III. Continuity of the Family. Celibacy Forbidden. Divorce in Case of Sterility. Inequality Between the Son and Daughter

IV. Adoption and Emancipation

V. Of Kinship. What the Romans Called Agnation

VI. The Right of Property

VII. The Right of Succession

VIII. Authority in the Family

IX. Morals of the Ancient Family

X. The Gens at Rome and in Greece

BOOK THIRD.

The City.

I. The Phratry and The Cury. The Tribe

II. New Religious Beliefs

III. The City Formed

IV. The City

V. Worship of the Founder. The Legend of Æneas.

VI. The Gods of the City

VII. The Religion of the City

VIII. The Rituals and the Annals

IX. Government of the City. The King

X. The Magistracy

XI. The Law

XII. The Citizen and the Stranger

XIII. Patriotism. Exile

XIV. The Municipal Spirit

XV. Relations Between the Cities. War. Peace. The Alliance of the Gods

XVI. The Roman. The Athenian

XVII. The Omnipotence of the State. The Ancients Knew Nothing of Individual Liberty

BOOK FOURTH.

Revolutions.

I. Patricians and Clients

II. The Plebeians

III. First Revolution

IV. The Aristocracy Governs the Cities

V. Second Revolution. Change in the Constitution of the Family. The Right of Primogeniture Disappears. The Gens Is Dismembered

VI. The Clients Become Free

VII. Third Revolution. The Plebs Enter the City

VIII. Changes in Private Law. The Code of the Twelve Tables. The Code of Solon

IX. New Principles of Government. The Public Interest and The Suffrage

X. An Aristocracy of Wealth Attempts to Establish Itself. Establishment of Democracy. Fourth Revolution

XI. Rules of Democratic Government. Examples of Athenian Democracy

XII. Rich and Poor. Democracy Perishes. The Popular Tyrants.

XIII. Revolutions of Sparta

BOOK FIFTH.

The Municipal Regime Disappears.

I. New Beliefs. Philosophy Changes the Rules of Politics

II. The Roman Conquest

III. Christianity Changes the Conditions of Government

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Ancient or modern, the city is among man's most complex creations and probably the most illustrative of both his best and worst qualities. The Ancient City, originally published in the 1870s, provides a 19th-century French view of Greek and Roman metropolises."

Washington Post

"A candidate for the first modern sociologist of religion." — Heritage Review

"Political theory was effectively completed by Coulanges and de Jouvenel. [...] Coulanges so exhaustively explains Rome in particular, that its astonishing he isn't compared to Newton." — C. A. Bond

"Fustel de Coulanges [...] takes religious beliefs to be the fundamental reality in a civilization, and then he tries to show how all the other aspects of that civilization follow from its religion. In The Ancient City, this method is applied to the classical civilization of Greece and Rome, and it produces fascinating results." — Bonald, Throne and Altar

From the Publisher