The Ancient City

The oldest institutions of Greece and Rome, argues French historian Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, grew out of religion. Working from the writings of ancient poets and historians, he finds that each family practiced a domestic religion with its own gods and forms of worship, centered on the ancestor cult, which governed family hierarchy, ownership and inheritance. Over time those rules passed to larger units, the gens and finally the city-state, so that both the city and private property have religious origins. Laws that first encoded aristocratic privilege provoked a social revolution, and the ancient city endured until Christianity arrived. The text is divided into five books, and its method shaped Émile Durkheim's conception of religion.

Marc Andreessen called it the best single book he has found explaining who we are and how we came to be here.