Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks ― Adapted to the Present State of Great Britain

In 1759, at the height of the Seven Years’ War, when Great Britain was suffering a series of military reversals, Montagu considered his country’s plight in an historical context formed by the study of five ancient republics: Sparta, Athens, Thebes, Carthage, and Rome. Montagu’s focus on the ancient republics gives his contribution a distinctive twist to the chorus of voices lamenting Britain’s decline, and his analysis exerted influence in three momentous eighteenth-century crises: the Seven Years’ War, the American War of Independence, and the French Revolution. This is the first modern edition of Montagu’s work.

Montagu’s warnings in Reflections on the Rise and Fall of the Ancient Republicks are unusual in that each of the five states he examines supplies a separate lesson adapted to the needs of Britain during the crisis. Sparta instructs modern Britain to suppress commerce, refinement, and opulence and to bolster the landed interest. Athens warns of the dangerous levity of a democratical form of government, of the disastrous influence the people can exercise over the constitution and policy of a state if they are not checked by a powerful and confident aristocracy, of the proneness of the people to encourage charismatic despotism, and lastly of the folly of foreign entanglements and empire-building. Thebes, more encouragingly, demonstrates the potency of a “very small number of virtuous patriots” to save a state from corruption. The calamitous Carthaginian experience with mercenaries shows the incomparable superiority of a militia over hired soldiers. Finally, Rome plays her usual role of showing the fatal consequences of luxury. In the end, it was the Epicurean atheism of the Roman upper classes that gave the coup de grâce to the Roman state; an interpretation of Roman decline that paves the way for Montagu’s censure of British irreligion in his own day.

Edward Wortley Montagu (1713 –1776) was the son of a wealthy British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire and of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. He was a student of oriental languages at the University of Leiden, which apparently proved useful during the peace negotiations at Aix-la-Chapelle which concluded the War of the Austrian Succession in 1748.

David Womersley is Thomas Warton Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His most recent book is an edition of Jonathan Swift’sGulliver's Travels (CUP, 2012).