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The Ancient City

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The Ancient City THE ANCIENT CITY: STUDY RELIGION, LAWS, AND INSTITUTIONS OF GREECE AND HOME. BT PUSTBL DB COULANGES. TRANSLATED FROM THE LATEST FRENCH EDITION BY WILLARD SMALL. TENTH EDITION. BOSTON: LEE AND SHEPARD. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, By WILLARD SMALL, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Copyright, 1901, by Willard Small. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. &" PAOB Necessity of studying the oldest Beliefs of the Ancients in order to understand their Institutions • BOOK FIRST. ANCIENT BELIEFS. CHAPTER I. Notions about the Soul and Death 15 II. The Worship of the Dead 23 III. The Sacred Fire IV. The Domestic Religion BOOK SECOND. THE FAMILY. OHAPTBB I. Religion was the constituent Principle of the an- cient Family II. Marriage aaiuag the Greeks and Romans. .... 68 III. The Continuity of the Family. Celibacy forbidden. Divorce in Case of Sterility. Inequality be- tween the Son and the Daughter. 61 4 CONTENTS. CHAPTBB FAGS IV. Adoption and Emancipation. 68 V. Kinship. What the Romans called Agnation. 71 -VI. The Right ot Property. VII. The Right of Succession 93 1. Nature and Principle of the Bight of Succes- sion among the Ancients 93 2. The Son, not the Daughter, inherits 96 3. Collateral Succession 100 4. Effects of Adoption and Emancipation. 103 6. Wills were not known originally 104 6. The Right of Primogeniture 107 VIII. Authority in the Family • 1. Principle and Nature of Paternal Powerv among the Ancients Ill 2. Enumeration of the Rights composing the Pa- ternal Power 117 IX. Morals of the Ancient Family 123 X. The Gens at Rome and in Greece 131 1. What we learn of the Gens from Ancient Doc- uments 134// 2. An Examination of the Opinions that hare been offered to explain the Roman Gens. 13$ 8. The Gens was nothing but the Family still holding to its primitive Organization and / its Unity 141 */ 4. The Family (Gens) was at first the only Form of Society. CONTENTS. BOOK THIRD. THE CITY. CHAPTER I. The Phratry and the Cury. The Tribe II. New Religious Beliefs 159 1. The Gods of Physical Nature 159 2. Relation of this Religion to the Development of Human Society 161 III. The City is formed 167 IV. The City. Urbs 177 V. Worship of the Founder. Legend of JEneas. 188 VI. The Gods of the City 193 VII. The Religion of the City 205 1. The Public Meals 205 2. The Festivals and the Calendar 210 3. The Census 213 4. Religion in the Assembly, in the Senate, in the Tribunal, in the Army. The Triumph. 216 VIII. The Rituals and the Annals 222 IX. Government of the City. The King 1. Religious Authority of the King 231 1 2. Political Authority of the King 235^ X. The Magistracy 239 — XI. The Law XII. The Citizen and the Stranger 258 XIII. Patriotism. Exile „ . 264 XIV. The Municipal Spirit . 268 XV. Relations between the Cities. War. Peace. The Alliance of the Gods 273 —XVI. The Roman. The Athenian 280 • XVII. Omnipotence of the State. The Ancients knew nothing of Individual Liberty 29 CONTENTS. BOOK FOURTR REVOLUTIONS. OHAPTBB PAGE I. Patricians and Clients 299 II. The Plebeians 307 III. First Revolution 314 1. The Political Power is taken from the Kings, who still retain their Religious Authority. 314 2. History of this Revolution at Sparta 316 3. History of this Revolution at Athens. .... 319 4. History of this Revolution at Rome 324 IV. The Aristocracy govern the Cities 330 V. Second Revolution. Changes in the Constitution v of the Family. The Right of Primogeniture disappears. The Gens is dismembered 336 VI, The Clients are Freed 841 1. What Clientship was at first, and how it was transformed 341 2. Clientship disappears at Athens. The Work of Solon 349 3. Transformation of Clientship at Rome. 364 VII. Third Revolution. Plebs enter the Citv. .... 368 1. General History of this Revolution 360 2. History of this Revolution at Athens 372 3. History of this Revolution at Rome 379 •VIII. Changes in Private Law. Code of the Twelve Tables. Code of Solon. 410 IX. The New Principle of Government. The Public Interest and the Suffrage 423 X. An Aristocracy of Wealth attempts to establish it- self. Establishment of the Democracy. Fourth Revolution 430 CONTENTS. 7 CHAPTER PAGE XI. Boles of the Democratic Government. Examples of Athenian Democracy .... 439 XII. Rich and Poor. The Democracy falls. Popular Tyrants 449 XIII. Revolutions of Sparta 458 BOOK FIFTH. THE MUNICIPAL REGIME DISAPPEARS. I. New Beliefs. Philosophy changes the Principles and Rules of Politics 470 II. The Roman Conquest 481 1. A few Words on the Origin and Population of Rome. 482 2. First Aggrandizement of Rome (753-350 B. C.) 480 3. How Rome acquired Empire (350-140 B. C.). 490 4. Rome everywhere destroys the Municipal System 600 5. The Conquered Nations successively enter the Roman City 608 IIL Christianity changes the Conditions of Govern- ment. 619 THE ANCIENT CITY. INTRODUCTION. • The Necessity of studying the earliest Beliefs of the An- cients in order to understand their Institutions. IT is proposed here to show upon what principles and by what rules Greek and Roman society was gov- erned. We unite in the same study both the Greeks and the Romans, because these two peoples, who were two branches of a single race, and who spoke two idioms of a single language, also had the same insti- tutions and the same principles of government, and passed through a series of similar revolutions. We shall attempt to set in a clear light the radi- cal and essential differences which at all times distin- guished these ancient peoples from modern societies. In our system of education, we live from infancy in the midst of the Greeks and Romans, and become ac- customed continually to compare them with ourselves, to judge of their history by our own, and to explain our revolutions by theirs. What we have received from them leads us to believe that we resemble them. We have some difficulty in considering them as for« 9 10 INTBODTJCTION. eign nations; it is almost always ourselves that we see in them. Hence spring many errors. We rarely fail to deceive ourselves regarding these ancient na- tions when we see them through the opinions and facts of our own time. Now, errors of this kind are not without danger. The ideas which the moderns have had of Greece and Rome have often been in their way. Having imper- fectly observed the institutions of the ancient city, men have dreamed of reviving them among us. They have deceived themselves about the liberty of the an- cients, and on this very account liberty among the moderns has been put in peril. The last eighty years have clearly shown that one of the great difficulties which impede the march of modern society, is the habit which it has of always keeping Greek and Ro- man antiquity before its eyes. To understand the truth about the Greeks and Ro- mans, it is wise to study them without thinking of ourselves, as if they were entirely foreign to us; with the same disinterestedness, and with the mind as free, as if we were studying ancient India or Arabia. Thus observed, Greece and Rome appear to us in a character absolutely inimitable; nothing in modern times resembles them; nothing in the future can re- semble them. We shall attempt to show by, what rules these societies were regulated, and it will be freely admitted that the same rules can never govern humanity again. Whence comes this ? Why are the conditions of human government no longer the same as in earlier :times ? The great changes which appear from time to time in the constitution of society can be the effect neither of chance nor of force alone. 1NTBODUCTION. 11 The cause which produces them must be powerful, and must be found in man himself. If the laws of human association are no longer the same as in an- tiquity, it is because there has been a change in man. There is, in fact, a part of our being which is modified from age to age; this is our intelligence. It is always in movement; almost always progressing; and on this account, our institutions and our laws are subject to change. Man has not, in our day, the way of thinking that he had twenty-five centuries ago; and this is why he is no longer governed as he was governed then. The history of Greece and Rome is a witness and an example of the intimate relation which always exists between men's ideas and their social state. Examine the institutions of the ancients without thinking of their religious notions, and you find them obscure, whimsical, and inexplicable. Why were there patri- cians and plebeians, patrons and clients, eupatrids and thetes; and whence came the native and ineffaceable differences which we find between these glasses ? What was the meaning of those Lacedaemonian institutions which appear to us so contrary .to nature ? How are we to explain those unjust caprices of ancient private law; at Corinth and at Thebes, the sale of land pro- hibited; at Athens and at Rome, an inequality in the succession between brother and sister? What did the jurists understand by agnation, and by gens? Whyf those revolutions in the laws, those political revolu-* tious ? What was that singular patriotism which some- times effaced every natural sentiment? What didt they understand by that liberty of which they were) always talking ? How did it happen that institutions so very different from anything of which we have an idea to-day, could become established and reign for BO 12 IKTBODUCTION.
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