Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence

This is Montesquieu's ‘rise and fall of the Roman Empire’, an essay published in 1734. Originally intended as part of De l'esprit des lois, it sets natural causality against the providential schemes of Bossuet's Discours sur l'histoire universelle, arguing that the growth of the empire was due to such factors as the size and economy of the early Roman state, which pushed its people towards wars of conquest, and its decline to the corruption brought on by excessive expansion. It is written in an impressively sober, laconic style.

[Peter France]