Roman Emperors in Montesquieu’s Considerations

Abstract In his Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence (1734, rev. 1748), the French political philosopher Montesquieu presented his theory concerning the decline and fall of the Roman empire. For a while, Rome maintained its greatness through prudence and audacity in war, and through impeccable statecraft. However, once Augustus instituted the system of the Principate, Rome irreversibly lost its spirit of greatness. Although extremely well versed in a range of ancient sources (both Latin and Greek), Montesquieu uses evidence with such a high level of selectivity that his emperors became essentially unrecognizable to those with any knowledge of Roman imperial history. This chapter explores how and why Montesquieu chose Tacitean style over ancient content to create his version of the Roman empire. It argues that Considérations serves his broader philosophical purpose as a warning about absolute monarchy. This is conditioned by Montesquieu’s context and seventeenth-to-eighteenth century French imperialism.