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The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1788)

by Edward Gibbon

Other authors: See the other authors section.

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations / Mentions
3,233414,057 (4.3)2 / 188
The pre-eminent historian of his day, Edward Gibbon (1737-94) produced his magnum opus in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Reissued here is the authoritative seven-volume edition prepared by J. B. Bury (1861-1927) between 1896 and 1900. Immediately and widely acclaimed, Gibbon's work remains justly famous for its magisterial account of Roman imperialism and Christianity from the first century CE through to the fall of Constantinople and beyond. Innovative in its use of primary sources and notable for its tone of religious scepticism, this epic narrative stands as a masterpiece of English literature and historical scholarship. Volume 4 focuses on the fifth and sixth centuries CE, examining the Vandal sack of Rome and the fall of the Western Empire, the conversion of barbarians to Christianity, the Saxon conquest of Britain, and the wars of the Goths and the Vandals.… (more)
  1. 21
    Byzantium: The Early Centuries by John Julius Norwich (nessreader)
  2. 00
    On Liberty by John Stuart Mill (themulhern)
    themulhern: Well turned, caustic sentences about human nature.
  3. 00
    Memoirs of My Life by Edward Gibbon (Anonymous user)
    Anonymous user: An obligatory read for anybody who enjoys the Decline and Fall. Gibbon's complex personality is more than palpable in his magnum opus, but it can be experienced with much greater force in his uniquely spiritual (in the secular sense of the word!), exquisitely written, stylishly candid and much too short Memoirs.… (more)
  4. 00
    The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire {abridged by Lentin and Norman} by Edward Gibbon (Anonymous user)
    Anonymous user: Excellent abridged edition to start with before tackling the real thing. Reprints 28 complete chapters (out of 71, the rest are supplied with short summaries). Gibbon's footnotes are complete, the numerous Latin phrases in them are translated. Very nice introduction (plus occasional footnotes) by the editors, Antony Lentin and Brian Norman. On the downside, the volume is not especially handy in paperback and the font is rather smallish.… (more)
  5. 01
    An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC - AD 409 by David Mattingly (John_Vaughan)
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» See also 188 mentions

English (37)  Dutch (1)  All languages (38)
Showing 1-5 of 37 (next | show all)
My gosh this was a slog! Six books of 600 pages each. It was definitely worth the effort, though. I must admit that the level of detail was daunting, but the patterns that such detail exhibited the rhyming history that Mark Twain remarked upon.

I have neither the time nor the inclination to comprehensively rate the series. My favorite aspects of the series are the comprehensive research against primary sources (I gave up trying to read the footnotes after about the second book) and the double-history perspective of a late-18th-century writer examining Roman and Byzantine history. This is an impressive feat of scholarship!

Another motivation for my reading the series was to fill the gaps of my understanding of this massive span of time. Naturally, the interminable list of emperors' names blended together after a while, but the sweep of the narrative will guide me when I next encounter these names, times, and places. The podcast Hardcore History had already done a pretty comprehensive job covering the Mongolian Empire, so it was satisfying to see that narrative mesh with Gibbon's description of the period. I expect this will happen many times over the course of my future reading.

If you're interested in the history of Western Civilization, I'd recommend putting in the effort to read the entire series. Although I found the level of detail to be tedious at times, I am glad that I persevered. ( )
  cmayes | Dec 21, 2023 |
An 18th century exploration into the events surrounding the Roman Empire and its territories from ca. 180 until the 15th century.

The author is an 18th century Brit who has granted the ancient Romans their conceit, and the work must be read and understood in that light. One of the great opportunities for reflection in reading this work in the early 21st century is to consider what Europe, north Africa, and western Asia must have looked like to someone living in 1776, and the different forms of continuity and discontinuity which are maintained. As an example, Gibbon confesses how there are some areas of Italy which, in his day, had not yet recovered in population from the Byzantine-Gothic wars and the bubonic plague of the middle of the 6th century; we would not be able to make such an observation on the other side of the population boom which has attended to the industrial revolution.

Gibbon does well at considering not just secondary but especially primary sources, and he is rather opaque about his biases and prejudices regarding them. The length of discourse ebbs and flows with the amount and quality of these witnesses: the introductory books set forth the condition of the Empire in the days of the Antonines, the generally confessed high point of the Roman Empire, and fills in some of the details about the infrastructure of the Empire as it had developed from the days of Augustus. Then over a few books Gibbon covers the long/awful "third century" of 180-280 and all of the trials of the Empire. The fourth century resurgence and crisis defeats of 280-400 are covered in many books, including discussions of the development of Christianity, and thus ends the first modern volume. Then Gibbon gets to the collapse of the Empire at the hands of the German tribes in the West, and the maintenance of the Empire in the East. Over many books we read of Justinian, his conquests, and his law code; Gibbon has precious little to say about the Justinian plague beyond its virulence. Gibbon quickly covers Justinian through Heraclius, and the second modern volume ends with his characterization of the various Emperors from Heraclius until Isaac Angelus and the Latin conquest of Constantinople. The third modern volume covers the medieval period, and does so in two phases: from 600-1200, looking in across the world of the former Roman Empire and the exploits in Italy, Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire, Muhammad, the rise of Islam, the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphates, the Bulgarians, Russians, Normans, the Turks, and then the Crusades, leading to the Fourth Crusade. Then Gibbon does something similar with the 1200-1450 period: the Greek loss of Constantinople, their fragmented empires, and recovery of Constantinople; the Mongols and the rise of the Ottomans; relationship between Byzantium and the West; the final loss of the Eastern Roman Empire; and Gibbon concludes by considering Rome itself from the tenth century until the end of the Great Schism. He then renders some conclusions.

Gibbon is often criticized for how he blames the fall of Rome on Christianity. I did not perceive in his work any truly monocausal explanation of this sort. In places where he would presume Christianity would have loosened the "martial spirit" of the Romans, he would be misguided. While Gibbon is a man of the Enlightenment - and in his notes you can tell he is a big fan of Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment in particular - his explorations of the various doctrinal controversies are well expressed and reasoned, and he seems less condemnatory of the religion itself and much more fatigued with the constant in-fighting over ultimately speculative matters. And in truth the divisions within Christianity absolutely weakened the standing of the Empire: when the Coptic Christians of Egypt welcomed the conquest of the Muslims so they would no longer be under the yoke of Constantinople, that tells you something; a big part of the ultimate end of the Byzantine Empire was the division and hostility engendered between them and the Catholics to the west.

What should stand out about this narrative, both as told by Gibbon and in general, is not about how Rome declined and fell, as if we can thus read the tea leaves about how such powers decline and fall in order to ameliorate our own, because all powers invariably rise, decline, and fall. Instead, it should be about the resilience of the Roman Empire: the miracle is not that it collapsed, but that it endured for so long in reality, and has never been exorcised from the mentality of Europeans ever since. "Caesars" as Kaisers and Czars and Sultans ruled in Europe until only a century ago; one cannot understand medieval and modern European history without grappling with how the Roman Empire continually captured their imagination.

The most modern research leads us to put far more weight on the role of climate change and its attendant consequences: more challenging food growing conditions which can quickly lead to greater ravaging and repine, the ferret and the transmission of the bubonic plague, and thus a devastation in the 6th century which leaves its mark in the archaeological record for over a century and which the world of Late Antiquity could not adequately recover (and, as seen above, in some respects, had not even recovered by the time the United States of America came into being!). If we're looking for a big lesson from Rome about how powers fall, that's the one we should heed. ( )
  deusvitae | Jun 12, 2023 |
Best narrative history ever written. Gibbon had so many fewer sources and tools than we have today, but his basic conclusions from the late 18th century information he had are still largely correct today.

A weakened military and political state that relied heavily on barbarian mercenary soldiers for defense was doomed. The different internal barbarian factions just served to divide the military and political and religious structures to a point to where they were easy pickin's from both inside and outside the empire. The western empire falling first while the eastern (Greek) Byzantine empire, under less external pressure, survives much longer. (Until their Roman Christian Crusader brothers came to sack them.)

Gibbons details the whole ugly mess down to minute detail and doesn't leave anything out, from incest to slaughter. His narrative is lively and opinionated, full of both shock and humor.

Read the whole damned thing, footnotes and all, not some abridged abomination. This is a literary work as much as an historical work.

Anyone who needs an abject lesson on how the modern western world is going to go, should read these books. We're already in the age of bread and circuses. ( )
  Gumbywan | Jun 24, 2022 |
The first four volumes are highly intriguing and very interesting. Gibbon has a very interesting take on Rome’s fall and its connection to what he was experiencing in the 1770s. Given this connection to him, it’s hard to separate his bias, but the bias makes sense. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I can’t wait to read the last four volumes. ( )
  historybookreads | Jul 26, 2021 |
Il 27 giugno nel 1787, lo storico inglese Edward Gibbon completò il volume finale de “La Storia del Declino e della Caduta dell’Impero Romano”, nel suo giardino di Losanna, in Svizzera.
Nel diario, scrisse: “Non intendo nascondere le prime emozioni di gioia per il recupero della mia libertà e forse anche la speranza della mia fama … Mi ero abituato ad una vecchia e piacevole compagnia”.
La Storia richiese 20 anni di lavoro e sei volumi di stampa per essere completata. Traccia la traiettoria della civiltà occidentale dalla massima espansione e splendore dell’Impero romano alla caduta di Bisanzio.
Il libro fu un grande successo, divenne il modello per tutti i futuri testi storici. Gibbon è considerato il primo storico moderno dell’antica Roma.
Ha scritto: “La storia è, in effetti, poco più che il registro dei crimini, delle follie e della sventura dell’umanità”.
----
On this day June 27 in 1787, English historian Edward Gibbon completed the final volume of “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, in his garden in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In his diary, he wrote, “I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom and perhaps the establishment of my fame … I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion.”
The history took 20 years and six volumes to complete. It traces the trajectory of Western Civilization from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium.
The book was a sensation, becoming the model for all future historical texts. Gibbon is considered the first modern historian of ancient Rome. He wrote:
“History … is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortune of mankind.” ( )
  AntonioGallo | Sep 24, 2020 |
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» Add other authors (170 possible)

Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Edward Gibbonprimary authorall editionscalculated
Bury, John BagnellEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Bury, John BagnellIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Guedalla, PhilipForewordsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Low, D.M.Editorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Piranesi, Giovanni BattistaIllustratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Radice, BettyEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Smith, Sir WilliamEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Trevor-Roper, HughIntroductionsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Williams, RosemaryEditorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Womersley, David P.Contributorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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In the second century of the Christian Æra, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valor. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence: the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority, and devolved on the emperors all the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire; and after wards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.
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The pre-eminent historian of his day, Edward Gibbon (1737-94) produced his magnum opus in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. Reissued here is the authoritative seven-volume edition prepared by J. B. Bury (1861-1927) between 1896 and 1900. Immediately and widely acclaimed, Gibbon's work remains justly famous for its magisterial account of Roman imperialism and Christianity from the first century CE through to the fall of Constantinople and beyond. Innovative in its use of primary sources and notable for its tone of religious scepticism, this epic narrative stands as a masterpiece of English literature and historical scholarship. Volume 4 focuses on the fifth and sixth centuries CE, examining the Vandal sack of Rome and the fall of the Western Empire, the conversion of barbarians to Christianity, the Saxon conquest of Britain, and the wars of the Goths and the Vandals.

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General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1825 Original Publisher: Printed by J.F. Dove [for] G. Cowie and co. Subjects: Rome Byzantine Empire History / Ancient / General History / Ancient / Rome History / Medieval History / Europe / Greece Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: First In the choice of the attack, the French and siflgeand Venetians were divided by their habits of life conquest ofCon- and warfare. The former affirmed with truth, pie by the that Constantinople was most accessible on the side of the sea and the harbour. The latter -- ia. might assert with honour, that they had long enough trusted their lives and fortunes to a frail bark and a precarious element, and loudly demanded a trial of knighthood, a firm ground, and a close onset, either on foot or horseback. After a prudent compromise, of employing the two nations by sea and land, in the service best suited to their character, the fleet covering the army, they both proceeded from the entrance to the extremity of the harbour: the stone bridge of the river was hastily repaired; and the six battles of the French formed their encampment against the front of the capital, the basis of the triangle which runs about four miles from the port to the Propontis. On the edge of a broad ditch, at the foot of a lofty rampart, they had leisure to contemplate the difficulties of their enterprise. The gates to the right and left of their narrow camp poured forth frequent sallies of cavalry and light-infantry, which cut off their stragglers, swept the country of provisions, sounded the alarm five or six times in the course of each day, and compelled them to plant a pallisade, and sink an in- trenchment, for their immediate s...
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