The importance of engaging the problems of contemporary political theory has brought us to an unprecedented reliance on the historical commentary already provided by giants like Alexis de Tocqueville and Edmund Burke. Among these is also the less often noted Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges and his landmark work, The Ancient City. Fustel de Coulanges plunged deep into the world and language of the ancient Greeks and Romans. His presentation of religion as a factor in civilization equates to a vision of how and why the ancient city-state died. This is a non-partisan and spiritually unmotivated work of political-philosophical merit, in which from a perspective of Cartesian doubt Coulanges strips away layers of cultural fa
