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

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I was first exposed to this book in an anthropology class, where the professor used it to introduce the anthropological concept of descent, i.e. the inheritance of collective rights to valuable resources (above all land), through birth in a clan. Having read and research much more on this topic, and come back to "Ancient City," I find it still one of the most lucid expositions of descent and lineage institutions. (Note, though, that Mediterranean clans are somewhat unusual in being endogamous, not exogamous, like those of the Eastern Asia or sub-Saharan Africa).

Readers familiar with Herodotus or Livy will find their questions about the importance of bones of heroes and cult images answered in this book.

Also for anyone familiar with the Old Testament, and hoping to learn more about its social background, this book ought to be a fascinating read. Page after page can be annotated with Biblical verses (it is hard to believe that Fustel de Coulanges was not thinking of these verses when he wrote the book). The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is, in part, a recognizable Mediterranean family God--although Fustel de Coulanges argues that this same God, when revealed in the Christian Gospel, decisively transformed the ancient city into a new civilization based not on family gods, but on one universal God.

Fustel de Coulanges works with a typical 19th century social evolutionist view, one that is hardly acceptable today. His lack of knowledge about the other areas leads him to assume, for example, that endogamy is an inherent feature of clan-family religion; as noted above, this is incorrect. Once you control for these understandable errors, however, the progression from family to tribe to city, while unacceptable as a history, does make the exposition easy to follow.

Finally, when looking at this work in the context of today's knowledge particularly of archeology, what "Ancient City" strongly implies is the continuity between Bronze Age and Iron Age civilization in the Mediterranean. Twentieth century historians (including Momigliano, who wrote an introduction for the paperback edition) often seem to work with the assumption that the cataclysm of 1250-1200 BC created a tabula rasa in Greek history. To Fustel de Coulanges, the post-monarchic era from 700 BC on is not the defining moment of Greek and Roman civilization, but only a phase in its transformation into the semi-universal civilization of the Hellenistic and Roman imperial periods.

To conclude, this book is still an important work that should stimulate thought on the clan-tribal foundations of both classical and Biblical civilization.

Although originally appearing in 1864 and based only on reading the classical literature, it can correct much of the nonsense in most current work about Athenian Democracy, Roman Empire or the realities of Indo-European Pagan Religion as practiced in the City-States of the Ancient World.

Also contains the detailed information to show that the gens (family group) based mounted invaders who brought the Olympian Gods to Ancient Europe had no only wagons, but iron swords and advanced astronomical knowledge, since their hearth-based altars and ceremonies are based on the requirements of the ancient iron-working and weapon mending techniques, and they could tell anniversary dates which means they knew how to tell when a solar year from any date had elapsed.

The book was originally written in scholarly protest against the claims of Emperor Louis Napoleon III that he was re-establishing the Roman Empire and the Athenian Polis,etc. It remains an excellent antidote to the foolish claims today to have re-established Ancient Ways by various political and social gadflies.

_The Ancient City: A Study of the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Greece and Rome_ is a translation of _La Cite Antique_ of Fustel de Coulanges, first published in 1864, and made available as a translation by The Johns Hopkins University Press. Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges was a French classicist who devoted his attention to the ancient pagan civic religions of the Greeks and Romans, contrasting this with that of the Indians (Aryans). His ideas concerning this ancient pagan religion were part of a milieu of social evolutionary ideas that included H. S. Maine and J. J. Bachofen. He also wrote on the origins of the Gauls and French society and his ideas concerning their Roman origins were put to use by various extreme rightist organizations such as the Action Francaise of Charles Maurras. The writings of Fustel de Coulanges have proven particularly profitable for many later French sociologists and anthropologists, though they were to come to reject certain of his ideas as not being confirmed by historical evidence. Christianity played a special role in the theories of Fustel de Coulanges as the subsequent religion which overtook the pagan Greek and Roman civic religion and supplanted it with a universalist system. In addition, Fustel de Coulanges wrote against the various socialist theorists of the time, emphasizing the role of private property among the earliest Greeks and Romans. This book includes a Foreword by Arnaldo Momigliano and S. C. Humphreys which points to many of the central issues involved in the reading of Fustel de Coulanges and the text of _The Ancient City_ proper.

To begin, the author notes the essential necessity of studying the earliest beliefs of the ancients in an effort to understand their institutions. The author next turns his attentions to the earliest beliefs about the soul and death. In particular, the abode of the dead is discussed, as well as the need of the dead for food (noting that on certain days the ancients were to bring food to the tombs of the departed). The author also notes the practice of the worship of the dead. The deified souls of the departed were known as demons or heroes to the Greeks and as Lares, Manes, or Genii to the Latins. The author also discusses the role of the sacred hearth-fire and the worship of fire. This hearth-fire was always kept burning. Next, the author turns his attention to the ancient domestic religion, emphasizing the patriarchal society that existed and the role of the family in that religion. Each family was ruled over by the father, who may bequeath his rule to his eldest son, and each family preserved its own gods (the ancestors) and the sacred fire. The author discusses such important aspects of the ancient family as marriage (in which a meal was shared between the bride and her husband initiating the bride into the worship of the husband's family), kinship, the right of succession, property (an important institution for the ancient family, though one that was passed down from father to son exclusively), authority in the family, and morals in the family. In particular, the author also discusses the gens at Rome and Greece (noting the aristocratic nature of the Roman clan and showing the contrast between plebeians and patricians). Following this discussion, the author turns his attention to the ancient city proper. Here, the author notes how while the ancient domestic religion prohibited families from mingling, it was still possible for the ancient families to unite in a phratria (to the Greeks) or curia (to the Latins). The author also shows how new religious beliefs formed, based on the worship of natural phenomena, invoking such ancient names for the sun as Hercules (the glorious), Phoebus (the shining), Apollo (he who drives away night or evil), Hyperion (the elevated Being), and Alexicacos (the beneficent). The author shows that while the ancient family domestic religion involved the worship of ancestors, these gods came to be present for all. The author discusses the city and its various customs, including the religion of the city and its gods. Here, he notes such things as public repasts, festivals and the calendar, the census, and religion in the assembly, in the Senate, in the Tribunal, in the Army, and in the Triumph. The author also discusses various rituals, the king, the magistracy, the law, and the citizen and stranger. In addition, the author also discusses ancient patriotism and the means to exile. Finally, the author discusses war, peace, and the alliance of the gods. This brings the author to a discussion of the omnipotence of the state and the lack of individual liberty among the ancients. The next section of this book concerns the various revolutions that occurred as plebeians demanded more rights from the ancient order, leading eventually to the creation of democracy. In the first revolution, political authority was taken from the king (although the king was still to retain religious authority). The author discusses this revolution was it played out at Sparta, Athens, and Rome. At this time, the aristocracy governed the city. In the second revolution, various changes occurred in the constitution of the family and the right of primogeniture disappeared. It was at this point that the clients became free (the author mentions in particular the work of Solon). In the third revolution, the plebs entered the city. The author discusses this revolution as it played out at Athens and Rome. The author also discusses changes in the private law, the Code of the Twelve Tables, and the Code of Solon. In the fourth revolution, an aristocracy of wealth tried to establish itself and this lead to the establishment of democracy and popular suffrage. However, it is in the conflict between rich and poor that democracy failed and popular tyrants arose. The final section of this book is devoted to the disappearance of the municipal regime. Here, the author notes how new beliefs arose as the traditional religious structures were changed to become more universal. The author discusses the Roman conquest and the subsequent rise of Christianity. By calling to itself the whole human race, Christianity made the most radical change to the pagan religion.

This book provides an excellent account of the earliest ancient Greek and Roman pagan religion that revolved around the family and its subsequent demise with the rise of the Romans and the beginnings of Christianity. It is the universal message of Christianity that lives on from most ancient times. This book is a fascinating sociological account of the ancient city and its religion and customs, showing in detail the ancient pagan belief system. Fustel de Coulanges is very learned and argues extensively from many ancient sources, both Greek and Roman (but also mentioning ancient Indian and Hebrew sources as well).

I thoroughly enjoyed reading "The Ancient City". Despite being fairly well read on the subject the book still ended up teaching me a few things about the family hearth rites / religion of the Romans & Greeks, ancestor worship, the religious origin of private property, and the evolution of Greek & Roman religion over time. The author also made some good points about the common misunderstandings regarding classical thought and culture - specifically the tendency of some scholars to turn the ancient Greeks or Romans into modern rationalists and to ignore the more "irrational" (or at least what a modern 'rationalist' would consider as such) elements of Traditional thought.


Why didn't I give it 5 stars if I liked reading it so much? Was it for the outdated scholarship that showed up at times? No, that's to be expected in a book this old. My main problem is the authors naive belief in progress and the supposed superiority of modern thought over that of the "primitive" Greeks and Romans. BUT.. if you can look past that then you will find a lot worth reading in this book.

This work is a discussion and a conveyance of ideas about ancient cities in Greece, and of Rome, with a focus on government, but mostly of laws and of 'private gods'. Rituals of the inhabitants of the ancient cities are especially detailed. There is also a bit on ancient cities of India which I found a little out of place but it wasn't overly distracting.

It's a controvesial work, a theory really, based upon whatever evidence that 19th Century French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges could garner in his day. His theories of 'The Ancient City' are in clear conflict with those of a later French sociologist, Émile Durkheim, (1858-1917).

I found de Coulanges' theories quite sensible and plausible, probably not so much influenced by his own personal religion as were the thoughts of Durkheim, (who was Jewish).

This book is by no means a page-turner -- but if one is interested in sociology and anthropology, it's a must read. I found it quite enlightening and would recommend it to anyone with scholarly notions.

Brilliant and unchallenged interpretation of community and City State life in Indoeuropean ancient societies. Fustel de Coulanges, a 19th Century French specialist in medieval history was so flustered by phrygian caps and the demagogic appropiation of "Greek Democracy" as a "model" or "precursor" of modern western democracies, that he decided to shut himself up at home for ten years, accompanied only by Sanscrit, Greek and Latin primary sources to canvas the truest possible reconstruction of ancient political life. Uninfluenced by university politics, he distilled this wondrous book, "La Cité Antique", where we find how these societies voted, made law, married, gave cult to their beliefs, etc. Obviously and by far the ancients didn't do these things as we do them now. "The Ancient City" should be essential reading for Law students and Roman Law courses in particular, even if your current professor omits the book in your reading list. Don't read it if you want to believe that the greeks and romans held primaries in New Hampshire.

Fustel de Coulanges describes a society that I found incredible. How could it be the case that a healthy society found itself founded solely under the patriarchal power of each family's pater? The pressure of such a state seems stifling. The father carried out the priest function for each family's hearth gods. A grander appreciation of the religion of the land led to city-making and laws. However, the father's grasp remained for a long time invincible, unquestionable.

After Fustel de Coulanges establishes the city, its laws, its religion and its constituent parts, the family, it undergoes a series of revolutions. These revolutions create a diminishing of the father's power and of the priest's singular authority, while simultaneously generating a partly enfranchised lower class and, to a certain extent, individual rights.

As the preface of Arnaldo Momigliano points out, there is no resolution to the paradox of the ancient city. Fustel de Coulanges seems to idealize the Arcadian piety of the earliest family groups and their persistent worship, while at the same time valorizing the rights of the individual and cessation of caste-like limitations rampant in the Mediterranean world.

This history magnificently documents change. Certain shifts will seem abrupt (from the Roman Empire to Christianity in four pages), certain absences notable (there is little discussion of Alexander in Greece's history, despite such early ecumenicalism), however the might and seductive nature of the narrative make thoughtfully provoking history.

Fustel de Coulanges has begun his history with terms such as sacred fire, ancestor worship, land, gods, family, city, law, and revolution to document changes that we can recognize. This book seems a little like a "Decline and Fall" of sacred institutions rather than political entities. I do not think that this work provides a mirror of the Greek and Roman city, but I think readers will leave it without disappointment and full of admiration from the creation wrought by the author's intuition and knowledge of ancient sources. The whole thing is spectacular.