The Age of Louis XIV Author:Will Durant, Ariel Durant "The Age of Louis XIV "is the biography of a period (1648 1715) that Spengler considered the apex of modern European civilization. Some centuries hence, Frederick the Great correctly predicted to Voltaire, they will translate the good authors of the age of Pericles and Augustus. Those authors are lovingly treated here: Pascal, Racine, ... more »and Boileau, Madame de Sevigne, Madame de la Fayette, and above all the philosopher-dramatist Moliere, who so memorably exposed the vices and hypocrisies of the age.« less