author
Fustel de Coulanges
1830–1889
A pioneering French historian, he became famous for showing how religion, family life, law, and politics were deeply connected in the ancient world. His best-known book, The Ancient City, helped generations of readers see Greece and Rome in a new way.
2 Audiobooks
La Cité Antique Étude sur Le Culte, Le Droit, Les Institutions de la Grèce et de Rome
by Fustel de Coulanges
About the author
Born in Paris on March 18, 1830, Fustel de Coulanges studied at the École Normale Supérieure and later spent time at the French School at Athens, where he also took part in excavations on Chios. He went on to teach at Strasbourg, the École Normale Supérieure, and the Sorbonne, building a reputation as a careful and demanding scholar.
His most influential work, La Cité antique (The Ancient City), appeared in 1864. In it, he argued that the institutions of Greece and Rome grew out of ancient religious beliefs and family rituals, an idea that made the book both original and widely read.
Later in life he turned increasingly to the history of early France and its political institutions. He was admired for his rigorous use of texts and for treating history as a discipline that required close evidence rather than grand legend, and he remained an important figure in French historical writing until his death on September 12, 1889, in Massy.