FERGUSON (Adam).
The History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman Republic.
An attractive early nineteenth century edition of this influential history of Rome by the Scottish enlightenment philosopher and historian Adam Ferguson, originally published in three-volumes in 1783, ‘narrating the rise and fall of the republic as a story of civic virtue and its corruption’ (ODNB).
‘The book was warmly received in Scotland, where excerpts were published in the Caledonian Mercury and the Scots Magazine. It won praise from Edward Gibbon. In the mid-nineteenth century it was still favourably mentioned by John Stuart Mill and reissued in the United States, where Ferguson’s spirited discussion of Rome’s republican heyday appealed to two generations of readers. Although the fame of Ferguson’s Roman Republic was short-lived and eventually wholly eclipsed, it did more than any of Ferguson’s books to determine its author’s image as latter-day Roman, a worthy, if somewhat quaint, lover of virtue and liberty in their classical republican sense’ (ODNB).
Bookplates Campbell of Stonefield to front pastedown, small amount of spotting to fore-edges, contents otherwise generally clean, joint slightly rubbed.
