The Ancient City - Imperium Press

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.

Author Biography

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.