The Ancient City
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- History enthusiasts interested in ancient Greek and Roman society and political institutions
- Students of political science or social history who need to understand classical city-state theory
- Readers who wish to understand the evolution of ancient institutions from the perspective of religion and family
- Readers of academic history who want to learn about nineteenth-century approaches to classical studies
Not a good fit for
- Readers who cannot read French, cannot find a translation, and are in a hurry
- General leisure readers expecting an easy, story-like narrative
- Specialist readers seeking the latest archaeological findings and contemporary research reviews
Reading tips
- Begin with the introduction or conclusion to grasp the author's basic approach of explaining the city-state through religion and family.
- Read in the order of family, clan, and city-state, noting how institutional change corresponds to changes in religious ideas.
- Slow down when reading detailed institutional analysis, and use basic knowledge of Greek and Roman history to understand the examples.
- After each chapter, restate the chain of argument in your own words to check whether you have truly grasped the author's logic.
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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About the author
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges (1830–1889) was a French historian. His representative work is La Cité Antique (The Ancient City). In this book he examines ancient family and religious institutions, exploring the connections among religious ideas, family organization, and city-state politics in order to understand the structure and evolution of ancient society. Only one of his works is held in this collection, and public information about his life and academic career is limited. The Ancient City nevertheless shows his attention to the inner links between institutions and beliefs, with rigorous prose and meticulous argument. The book has had a lasting influence on later studies of ancient society and religion and is often regarded as an important reference for understanding the city-state institutions of ancient Greece and Rome.
