ABSTRACT
In 1746, Frederick the Great wrote that his contemporaries had produced no work to match Thucydides's Peloponnesian War. Frederick II marked Montesquieu's Considerations with marginalia that still show today how exhaustively he studied the work. With great intuition, Werner Stark noted the importance of Roman antiquity for Montesquieu, who accomplished the actual task he had set himself without overburdening it with detailed analysis. The remoteness of our modern interpretations from the world of Rome has not come about by accident. Already in his "Discours prononce a la rentree de l'Academie de Bordeaux", Montesquieu had paid tribute to the poet Virgil by incorporating verses from Virgil into his own text. Montesquieu's main work, De l'Esprit des Lois, has had the greater effect of the two books on political science and intellectual history. Montesquieu is of the opinion that the situation was different in Athens or the Italian republics of his own time.
