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Summary:

"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 Cite antique, drew upon physical evidence as well as ancient documents rather than the usual post-Classical histories. The result is a fresh, accurate, and detailed portrait of the religious, family, and civic life of Periclean Athens and Rome during the time of Cicero. This fascinating sociological account reveals the significance of kinship and the cult of the family hearth and ancestors to ancient Hellenic and Latin urban culture. It chronicles the rise of family-centered pagan belief systems, tracing their gradual decline to the spread of Christianity. Fustel cites ancient Indian and Hebrew texts as well as Greek and Roman sources. The ingenuity of his interpretations, along with his striking prose style, offer readers a vital and enduring historic survey."--Publisher's website.

Table of Contents:

• Book first : Ancient beliefs : Notions about the soul and death
• The worship of the dead
• The sacred fire
• The domestic religion
• Book second : The family : Religion was the constituent principle of the ancient family
• Marriage among the Greeks and Romans
• The continuity of the family
• Celibacy forbidden
• Divorce in case of sterility
• Inequality between the son and the daughter
• Adoption and emancipation
• Kinship
• What the Romans called agnation
• The right of property
• The right of succession : Nature and principle of the right of succession among the ancients
• The son, not the daughter, inherits
• Collateral succession
• Effects of adoption and emancipation
• Wills were not known originally
• The right of primogeniture

• Authority in the family : Principle and nature of paternal power among the ancients
• Enumeration of the rights composing the paternal power among the ancients
• Enumeration of the rights composing the paternal power
• Morals of the ancient family
• The Gens at Rome and in Greece : What we learn of the Gens from ancient documents -An examination of the opinions that have been offered to explain the Roman Gens
• The Gens was nothing but the family still holding to its primitive organization and its unity
• The family (Gens) was at first the only form of society
• Book third : The city : The Phratry and the Cury
• the tribe
• New Religious beliefs : The gods of physical nature
• Relation of this religion to the development of human society
• The city is formed
• The city
• Urbs
• Worship of the founder
• Legend of Eneas
• The gods of the city
• The religion of the city : The public meals
• The festivals and the calender
• The census
• Religion in the assembly, in the senate, in the tribunal, in the army
• The triumph
• The rituals and the annals
• Government of the city
• The king : Religious authority of the king
• Political authority of the king
• The magistracy
• The law
• The citizen and the stranger
• Patriotism
• Exile
• The municipal spirit
• Relations between the cities
• War
• Peace
• The alliance of the gods
• The Roman
• The Athenian
• Omnipotence of the state
• The ancients knew nothing of individual liberty
• Book fourth : The revolutions : Patricians and clients
• The plebeians
• First revolution : The political power is taken from the kings, who still retain their religious authority
• History of this Revolution at Sparta
• History of this revolution at Athens
• History of this revolution at Rome
• The aristocracy governs the cities
• Second revolution
• Changes in the constitution of the family
• The right of primogeniture disappears
• The Gens is dismembered
• The clients become free : What clientship was at first and how it was transformed
• Clientship disappears at Athens
• The work of Solon
• Transformation of clientship at Rome
• Third revolution
• Plebs enter the city : General history of this revolution
• History of this revolution at Athens
• History of this revolution at Rome
• Changes in private law
• Code of the twelve tables
• Code of Solon
• The new principle of government
• The public interest and the suffrage
• An aristocracy of wealth attempts to establish itself
• Establishment of the democracy
• Fourth revolution
• Rules of the democratic government
• Examples of the Athenian democracy
• Rich and poor
• The democracy falls
• Popular tyrants
• Revolutions of Sparta
• Book fifth : The municipal regime disappears : New beliefs
• Philosophy changes the principles and rules of politics
• The Roman conquest : A few words on the origin and population of Rome
• First aggrandizement of Rome (753
• 350 B.C.)
• How Rome acquired empire (350
• 14 B.C.)
• Rome everywhere destroys the municipal system
• The conquered nations successively enter the Roman city
• Christianity changes the conditions of government.

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Author/Creator:

Fustel de Coulanges, 1830-1889

Languages:

English

Language Notes:

Item content: English

Main Work:

Cité antique [by Fustel de Coulanges] (English)

Other Related Resources:

Print version: Ancient city [by Fustel de Coulanges] (Dover ed.; Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications, 2006 — ISBN 0486447308; ISBN 9780486447308; LCCN 2005053737; OCLC Number 61479660)

Related Series:

Dover books on history, political and social science

Subjects:

Cities and towns, Ancient

Greece — Politics and government

Rome (Empire) — Politics and government

Politics and government

Greece

Rome (Empire)

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Digital Characteristics:

text file

Call Numbers:

JC51 .F89 2006eb

ISBNs:

9780486142357 (electronic bk.)
0486142353 (electronic bk.)
0486447308 [Invalid]
9780486447308 [Invalid]

OCLC Numbers:

946785472