The rise of the modern absolutist monarchies in Europe constitutes in many ways the birth of the modern historical epoch. <em>Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism</em>, the companion volume to Perry Anderson’s <em>Lineages of the Absolutist State</em>, is a sustained exercise in historical sociology to root the development of absolutism in the diverse routes taken from the slave-based societies of Ancient Greece and Rome to fully-fledged feudalism. In the course of this study Anderson vindicates and the refines the explanatory power of a Marxist conception of history, whilst casting a fascinating light on Greece, Rome, the Germanic invasions, nomadic society, and the different patterns of the evolution of feudalism in Northern, Mediterranean, Eastern and Western Europe.