La cité antique / The Ancient City

This is a brilliant exposition of the religious beliefs of the ancient Greeks and Romans and how that shaped the way they lived, their ideas, their government, and the culture they developed.  When we think of Greek and Roman religion, we immediately think of gods like Zeus, Athena, Apollo, and Venus and such, but de Coulanges goes even further back than that, to the domestic gods that were the dead ancestors of each family, and that protected only that family and their property so long as the living members of the family faithfully carried out the proper rites and sacrifices and owned the property on which their tombs were located.  Apparently, this ancestor worship was a religion the ancient Greeks and Romans shared with the Hindus and dates back to their common roots before the different groups diverged and migrated out to India and to Europe.  As their beliefs and worldview changed, so did Greco-Roman culture change, giving rise to the Greek and Italian city states that later consolidated into the Roman Empire.  In the last chapter, de Coulanges provides a brief outline of how radically Christianity changed the culture and outlook of the Roman Empire and why it brought an end to the ancient conception of the city.

This book is invaluable for those with an interest in the history of ancient Greece and Rome, those who are planning to read the classics and want to understand the mindset of the authors better, and those who want to see how a religion can shape the culture and civilization of a people. De Coulanges's purpose in writing it was to show how different the worldview of the ancient Greeks and Romans was from our own, to prevent the common mistake of believing the ancients to be too much like ourselves.