Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline

by Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat, baron de; Lowenthal, David

• ISBN13: 9780872204966
• ISBN10: 0872204960
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Inc

Summary

Reprints Lowenthal's translation with notes, published in 1965 by The Free Press. In one of his lesser known efforts, the great French essayist Montesquieu (1689-1755) starts with the beginnings of Rome and considers the characteristics of the people, the expansion, and the empire. Then he chronicles its decline, reign by reign, until there is nothing left of the Western Empire and he leaps to the Eastern. The French original was published in 1734 in Holland.

Table of Contents

Translator's Preface	vii
Introduction	1	(22)
Beginnings of Rome; Its Wars	23	(10)
The Art of War Among the Romans	33	(6)
How the Romans were Able to Expand	39	(4)
The Gauls; Pyrrhus; Comparison of Carthage and Rome; Hannibal's War	43	(12)
The Condition of Greece, Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt After the Reduction of the Carthaginians	55	(12)
The Conduct the Romans Pursued to Subjugate all Peoples	67	(12)
How Mithridates was able to Resist them	79	(4)
The Dissensions that Always Existed in the City	83	(8)
Two Causes of Rome's Ruin	91	(6)
The Corruption of the Romans	97	(4)
Sulla; Pompey and Caesar	101	(12)
The Condition of Rome After Caesar's Death	113	(6)
Augustus	119	(10)
Tiberius	129	(6)
The Emperors from Caius Caligula to Antoninus	135	(10)
The Condition of the Empire, from Antoninus to Probus	145	(12)
Change in the State	157	(10)
New Maxims Adopted by the Romans	167	(8)
Attila's Greatness; Cause of the Settlement of the Barbarians; Reasons why the Western Empire was the First to Fall	175	(10)
Justinian's Conquest; His Government	185	(10)
Disorders of the Eastern Empire	195	(6)
Weakness of the Eastern Empire	201	(12)
Reason for the Duration of the Eastern Empire; its Destruction	213	(8)
Index	221