Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Jehu Baker
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~190,000 words · 884 passages
Cite this work
- APAMontesquieu. (n.d.). Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans (Jehu Baker, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/considerations-on-the-causes-of-the-grandeur-and-decadence-of-the-romans
- MLAMontesquieu. Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans. Translated by Jehu Baker. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/considerations-on-the-causes-of-the-grandeur-and-decadence-of-the-romans.
- ChicagoMontesquieu. Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and Decadence of the Romans. Translated by Jehu Baker. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/montesquieu/considerations-on-the-causes-of-the-grandeur-and-decadence-of-the-romans.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The book in which Montesquieu explains why Rome rose and why it fell, arguing that it was not fortune but causes that can be listed.
Context and history
Published in 1734, fourteen years before The Spirit of the Laws, it reads as the trial run for that book: here he tests on a single case the method he will later apply to everything. The sentence quoted from it is that if a battle ruined a state, there was a general cause making it necessary that the state should perish by a single battle. It is also a covert political work: to speak of Rome's decline was to speak of the French monarchy, and his readers knew it.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
her public structures. The works which heretofore have given, and which yet give, the highest idea of her power, were constructed under the kings.' (a) The building of the eternal city was already commenced. For the purpose of procuring citizens, wives or lands, Eomulus and his successors were almost incessantly engaged in war with their neighbors. They returned home bringing with them the spoils of vanquished peoples— consisting of herds of cattle and sheaves of grain. These were occasions of great rejoicing in the city ; and such was the origin of those Triumphs, which were in after times the principal cause of the grandeur of the Eomans. The power of Eome was greatly increased by her tinion with the Sabines, a people as hardy and as warlike as the Lacedaemonians, from whom they were descended. Eomulus adopted their buckler, which was large, instead of the small Argive buckler which he had previously used.' And it should be noted, that the circumstance which contributed most to render the Eomans masters of the world was, that having contended successively against all nations, they invariably renounced their own usages as soon as they found better. ° Witnesa the astonishment of Dionysius of Halicarnassus in connection with the sewers constructed by Tarquin. (Ant. Horn. Book III ) They exist yet, (a) Consult my Note at the end of this chapter. — Tkanslator, * Plutarch, Idfe of Emnulvs. CHAP. I.] OP THE ROMANS.…