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Fustel de Coulanges
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The Ancient City - Imperium Press (Traditionalist Histories) Paperback – 26 Feb. 2020

4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 88 ratings
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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.

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  1. Print length
    366 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Imperium Press
  4. Publication date
    26 Feb. 2020
  5. Dimensions
    13.97 x 2.08 x 20.96 cm
  6. ISBN-10
    0648690547
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0648690542
  8. See all details
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Review

"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

About the Author

Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, (born March 18, 1830, Paris, France-died Sept. 12, 1889, Massy), French historian, the originator of the scientific approach to the study of history in France. After studying at the École Normale Supérieure, he was sent to the French school at Athens in 1853 and directed some excavations at Chios. From 1860 to 1870 he was professor of history at the faculty of letters at the University of Strasbourg, where he had a brilliant career as a teacher. His subsequent appointments included a lectureship at the École Normale Supérieure in February 1870, a professorship at the University of Paris faculty of letters in 1875, the chair of medieval history at the Sorbonne in 1878, and the directorship of the École Normale in 1880.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Imperium Press (26 Feb. 2020)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 366 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0648690547
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0648690542
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.97 x 2.08 x 20.96 cm
  • Customer reviews:
    4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 88 ratings

About the author

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Fustel de Coulanges

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Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
4.9 out of 5
88 global ratings
Authentic book about Roman paganism
5 Stars
Authentic book about Roman paganism
The book very detailed and most importantly authentic about Roman Paganism and how they practised it.I really love it.
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Top reviews from United Kingdom

"sudocrem"
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating text, excellent edition
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 January 2022
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This is for the Imperium Press 2020 edition. Offers a real insight into the evolution of ancient Greek and Roman religious thought and the subsequent impact on the development of the city-states. A truly unique book, which is cited to this day for the insights it provides (e.g. a Scruton book I read recently dedicated a few pages exclusively to this book). If you are of European heritage, and you want to understand more about the history of your people and of the importance they placed on family, faith and hearth, then this is a highly readable and informative place to start. Highly recommended.
3 people found this helpful
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William Sanderson
5.0 out of 5 stars A classic, republished in a lovely format by Imperium Press
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 December 2020
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This is an excellent work which has seldom been published in any high-quality edition. Thankfully, Imperium Press has brought out this present version, which is well-edited, with nice readable font and an introduction by Dennis Bouvard. One basic idea of this book is that the form of religion in early classical civilisation centered around the family hearth and the worship of that family's ancestors. This religion had important consequences for the economic, social and political development of that civilisation. Along the way, Coulanges provides many insights into not just classical civilisation, but the general dynamic at work in history. For more, read this book, which I could not recommend more highly.
One person found this helpful
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Thomas Carlson
5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic book about Roman paganism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 January 2022
Verified Purchase
The book very detailed and most importantly authentic about Roman Paganism and how they practised it.

I really love it.
Customer image
Thomas Carlson
5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic book about Roman paganism
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 January 2022
The book very detailed and most importantly authentic about Roman Paganism and how they practised it.

I really love it.
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Customer image
3 people found this helpful
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Faustbook
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential for anyone who loves the classics
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 June 2021
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One of the most illuminating books about the ancient world I have ever read. Really is fantastic and discusses many famous events in classical history from a different perspective.
2 people found this helpful
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vim
5.0 out of 5 stars The only edition worth reading.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 October 2021
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The only edition worth reading.
2 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

Martin Lazor
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent history before what you know of Rome
Reviewed in the United States on 7 May 2024
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Cultural history of the home based religion and changes as the city and empire were created.
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T.M.M.J
5.0 out of 5 stars The Key to Understanding Classical Antiquity
Reviewed in the United States on 30 September 2022
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The central lesson of THE ANCIENT CITY is that the key to understanding Classical civilization is through its religion. At the time of its publication, TAC was visionary as one of the first works by a professional historian to make an effort to filter out modern biases. Fustel de Coulanges understood that the kind of thinking produced by the Enlightenment, Romanticism, and (especially) Christianity was skewing the modern perception of the ancients. Fustel's remedy was that examining Greco-Roman religion, and following the consequences of said religion, was the key to comprehending the ancients as they comprehended themselves and the world around them.

The religion of the Greeks and the Romans (and the Hindus) was based not on inner faith or doctrine, but on formulaic rites and worship endlessly repeated through successive generations. Everything else in Greece and Rome flowed from this religion: the economy, society, war, and politics are all downstream from religion. This religion established the family led by the father of the household, private property rights, gender roles, and morality.

These families, united and delineated by the worship of a common male ancestor, grew in time into clans with multiple branches of the same family. The clans then formed associations called curies by the Romans and phratries by the Greeks. The phratries formed tribes and, finally, the tribes came together to establish the city-state. Each ascending social order was united by a common worship that at the same time separated them permanently from their neighbors.

Not only was Church and State not separate, they could not be separated because the religion established the state and legitimized it. That is the first half of TAC: explaining how Greece and Rome came to be through their religion. The second half of the book is devoted to how this religion was deconstructed by the Greeks and Romans (chiefly because the nature of urban life was inimical to the religion itself), who then replaced it with a kind of Iron Age equivalent of liberalism, before Christianity came along and reset everything to factory specs.

Overall, Fustel presents a tight, cohesive narrative with a lively prose that is serious, but not dry as so many historical studies tend to be. It is dense with information, but it is not moribund in its length. In regards to criticism, Fustel himself completely ignores the Hellenistic world, but that is likely because of a failing of his sources, and not Fustel himself who was clearly not willing to discuss any subject for which there isn't sufficient information derived from primary sources. In regards to the Imperium Press publication of TAC, there are the odd typos here and there, not enough to render the manuscript useless and annoying, but certainly noticeable to anyone who is reading the text closely. This is to be expected, since this is an English translation of a book that was originally published in French.

An outstanding classic from the golden age of historical scholarship.
17 people found this helpful
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Bob
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant Insight into the Pre-Christian Worldview
Reviewed in the United States on 4 June 2023
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This book is an indispensable summation of the pre-Christian/pagan outlook: one’s relation to family (living and dead), to clan, to tribe, and to city and nation. The pagan outlook is a sincerely spiritual one, unlike modern materialism.

Great reading for pagans and Christians alike who care to understand a philosophy of classical history: from the pre-historical Indo-Europeans to the decline of paganism in the advent of Christendom.
4 people found this helpful
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Old Blue
5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive study of Classical Greek society
Reviewed in the United States on 2 March 2022
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This is a must-have for anyone interested in the ancient world.
2 people found this helpful
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