609. The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges- Summary

609.  The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel De Coulanges.  1873. 
This is the sixth time I have read this book.  The scholarship which supports this and the insights from scraps and bits of ancient literature used to put this work together are of the highest order.  His basic contention is that an ancient religion developed by an Indo-European people worshiped dead ancestors.  A fire was kept and rituals developed to support these dead ancestors in a literal afterlife.  In return these ancestors protected the family and stood by the family through thick and thin.  This religion he insists is the oldest on earth.  Fustel suggests that while looking at the face of the dead, humans for the first time, began to wonder about a world not visible to the naked eye.  “Death was the first mystery, and it placed man on the track of other mysteries.  It raised his thoughts from the visible to the invisible, from the transitory to the eternal, from the human to the divine.”  Every house had a sacred fire.  This fire was the life of the deceased.  Homage was paid to it every day.  To change this religion took much time.  Human belief does not change with ease.  Wise words for those impatient and eager.  Fustel then explains that the sacred fire required that the family never die out.  A family which no longer existed, meant that the ancestors had no one to care for them.  Celibacy was forbidden.  The sacred fire is maintained by the male head of family.  It is passed to eldest son.  Woman has a part but she must be removed from her house of birth to that of her husband.  She thus becomes part of that family and no longer as far as religion is concerned has anything to do with her birth family.  This system was much the same in India, Greece and Italy. Morals and modes of behavior were derived from this ancient religion.  These were not made by laws for before laws existed the religion of the family ruled.
Whence came this power of religion of the family?  “This power was a belief.   Nothing has more power over the soul.  A belief is the work of our mind, but we are not on that account free to modify it at will.  It is our own creation, but we do not know it.  It is human, and we believe it a god.  It is the effect of our power, and it is stronger than we are.  It is in us; it does not quit us: it speaks to us at every moment.  If it tells us to obey, we obey; if it traces duties for us, we submit.  Man may, indeed, subdue nature, but he is subdued by his own thoughts.”  This is a most fascinating statement. 
When people think of the Romans and the Greeks, the Gods which come to mind are Zeus and Jupiter, etc.  These came later.  Fustel seems to suggest that humans first contemplated the death of a family member and then later looked at the physical forces of nature and derived the gods.
Family religion existed first.  But as time passed, gods of nature, the powers of nature came about.  As time passed, families began to realize that other families had the same gods, perhaps with different names but the same gods.  These formed groups: tribes.  The same system of worship was set up for these as existed for the family religion.  Thus each family had its own religion, completely distinct from the religion of any other family and groups of families had a common religion based on the religion of powers in nature. 
Fustel mentions something which I find so curious.  Each family had its book of family prayers.  These would have been prayers only for that family.  They were kept on wood, cloth and /or paper.  Prayer books also existed for tribes and cities.  Fustel wrote before any serious excavations at Pompeii.  Have any of these been found?  If not, why?  I suggest that of all items in the rush to leave, no one left behind the family prayer book.
There were other people besides those who worshiped ancestors.  Others lived nearby.  These would have been people who came from other areas; had been excluded from their family.  These came to be under the complete authority of the family.  However, these could not own property for only male heads could do so.  These were called clientes.  A revolution slowly took place which made these free of the family.  This took centuries.  This happened when cities were formed. Clients mingled with clients of other families.  They began to see advantages to going off on their own.  This process was long and may have been bloody.
This religion went through a series of revolutions.  Much the same revolution was experienced by all the cities of the Mediterranean, except one- Rome.  The Roman race was mixed.  It consisted of Greek, legend has it Trojan and Etruscan and native Italian.  Romans used this to their advantage.  “Rome was related to all peoples that it knew.”  “Its national worship was also an assemblage of several quite different worships.”  Rome was inclusive of other religions and proceeded over the centuries to make common ground with peoples in Italy.  Rome annexed territory and made citizens out of the conquered.  She absorbed the religion of the conquered city too.
As the city no longer held sway over religious life of people, this allowed Rome to expand outside of Italy.  It was a time of change in definition of patriotism, purpose of institutions, manners, religious ideas, laws.  Must have been mind boggling to those who took time to think about it.  These changes came about because tension between aristocrats who wanted to maintain the old religion and those who favored democracy made religion of the city less important.  What was important was who could get the job done.  City religion , the old city religion was weakened by this.  The Romans by and large supported the aristocrats.  The tension was felt in Rome too.  But democracy took a more gentle form in Rome.  Thus the democracy of Rome always had a strong aristocratic tone.  From 350 B.C. to 140 B.C.  extended its dominion over a very large area.
But there is another reason that this transformation and dominion took place,  philosophy in Greece challenged the morals and manners created by the ancient city religion. “Plato proclaims, with Socrates and the Sophists, that the moral and political  guide is in ourselves; that tradition is nothing, that reason must be consulted, and that laws are just only when they conform to human nature.”  Aristotle said “Law is reason.”  Between Rome and new thought employed by Rome the world was transformed.
In his section on Christianity, Fustel seems too general and consequently looses strength in the face of events in history. 
Fustel gives this definition for history:  History does not study material facts and institutions alone; its true object of study is the human mind:  it should aspire to know what his mind has believed, thought, and felt in the different ages of the life of the human race.