The Ancient City

A Study on the Religion, Laws, and Institutions of Ancient Greece and Rome

By: Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

Narrated by: Charlton Griffin

Length: 15 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

One of the most remarkable historical works of the 19th century came from the pen of French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a native of Paris. This amazing analysis of family and religious life among the ancient Greeks and Romans is the key to understanding ancient Mediterranean civilizations. The story begins in the misty period of the Bronze Age as the Indo-Europeans began to filter down into the Italian and Greek peninsulas. They brought with them a patriarchy that was based on ancestor worship and the veneration of hearth gods...the sacred fire which bonded family and state. As time passed, this hearth worship became codified and extremely complex. For thousands of years, there was no distinction whatsoever between religion and law. They were one and the same, even after the establishment of cities.

By the sixth century BC, the forces of societal evolution began to slowly erode this system. When citizens began to demand that laws be put into effect for the benefit of men instead of for the benefit of gods, it set in motion one of the world’s great revolutions. It transformed classical civilization, and eventually led to the destruction of the hearth gods. When Roman power and wealth expanded across the known world, it provoked a moral crisis. As a result, paganism decayed amid a general decline in religious authority and belief. This in turn led the Greeks and Romans to the realization that there could only be a single god. Thus, the way was eventually paved for the introduction of Christianity.

Public Domain (P)2021 Audio Connoisseur

A timeless gem.

The classical studies on our time are not only almost dead, but also suffer immensely by an attitude of avoiding any definitive opinion or assumption to be made. Few civilizations have as many and diverse literary sources as the Greco-Roman civilization. But the main mantra of its researchers is: "it's not safe to assume". about everything. While 2-3 fragments can lead to the wildest assumptions and the most extravagant theories about any other human civilization of the antiquity.

This book gives you a definitive answer about the formation of the ancient polis, its ties to the ancient religion and its transformation through the centuries. The author is an encyclopedia of knowledge and is able to shift through various ancient Greek and Roman sources. It is a monumental work, whose argument could be positively strengthened by using all the modern archeological findings.

The narrator is amazing. He reminds me of Anthony Hopkins or some actor of the legendary British series "I Claudius". You could picture Hannibal Lecter speaking to you about the subject during "dinner".

A glance into the past

The closest you can get to perceiving the ancient world as the man of antiquity..

Nice Book

This is a good book to give a foundational understanding of society’s current composition. I appreciate how they put music between each chapter to keep you in the mood.

Excellent Book With Interested Narration

The difference between AI and a human narrator is feeling, and this book is certainly narrated by a actor who very much is interested in the source material. The book flows well with the narration, and careful attention to diction and correct pronunciation of words is given (although the English pronunciations of Roman names like Caesar or Greek ones like Solon are used for familiarity). This is well worth the listen.

One of the best books I've ever read

This is one of the best books I've ever read. The information is extremely fascinating and gives you a completely different view of the Ancient world. It crosses linguistics, culture, art, family, religion, war, history, anthropology, etc. The audiobook is narrated very well and it is broken up into descriptive chapter headings with (ancient) music playing as an intro and outro.

Clear conceptual rendering.

In depth analysis into synthetic concepts. Lucid illustration of the mind-ideal world as the proper human abode.

The unfortunate last chapter 

The author described and summarized quite exhaustively the theoretic pagan principles of fire and the development from material worship, to the creation of mythological Greek gods, followed by the marriage and divorce of some church and state empires. Unfortunately, he missed the target of the last 500 years to the reality of the world today. he seem to lose interest after the first several dozen chapters, and went from fine theoretical detail to gross personal beliefs. In the last 20 minutes of the story, the author moved from defining the faith of the ancients to implying his own Christian faith. Unfortunately, it was quite a letdown after 14 hours of preamble to be let down without an attempt to theorize how and why human kind created men into gods. 

Hard to listen

Hard to listen because of the narrator. The voice is too low. A lot of squawking