The Ancient City

By Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges and Willard Small

Book Overview

With this influential study, French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges initiated a new approach to Greek and Roman city organization. Fustel de Coulanges' 1864 masterpiece, La Cit antique, drew... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000M98MZO
• Release Date: January 1955
• Publisher: Doubleday Anchor Books
• Length: 396 Pages
• Weight: 0.54 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Corrective to rationalist bias in constitutional politics

Fustel marshalls historical evidence to show that in the classical city-state social organisation based on religion -- for example, the patrician order, family graves, the sacred fire, the god Terminus who demarcated property, shared ceremonial meals, etc. -- came before social organisation based on law. The Ancient City should be read as a corrective to the excessively rationalist bias in constitutional thinking which we inherit from the 18th century. Sadly, this important and rewarding book did not appear until one hundred years after the US Constitution was adopted.