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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Edward Gibbon's monumental work, "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," spans six volumes, meticulously chronicling the complexities of Rome's gradual disintegration from the height of its power to the multifaceted factors contributing to its decline. Written in a lucid and elegant prose style characteristic of the 18th century, Gibbon employs a rich narrative interwoven with philosophical insight, rigorous analysis, and a keen awareness of historical context. His exploration delves into the interplay of political, military, and cultural shifts, presenting a comprehensive perspective not only on Rome but also on the broader themes of governance and civilization. Gibbon, an English historian and Member of Parliament, was profoundly influenced by the Enlightenment ideals of reason and skepticism towards traditional authority. His personal experiences, combined with his extensive reading of classical literature and contemporary historiography, equipped him with a unique lens through which to examine Roman history. His reflections on decay and renewal resonate profoundly with a rapidly changing 18th-century Europe, which was grappling with its own historical transformations. This work is an essential read for anyone interested in the intricacies of history and the profound influences of past civilizations on modern society. Gibbon's analysis not only illuminates the reasons behind Rome's downfall but also serves as a cautionary tale about the fragility of empires. Its timeless relevance and scholarly rigor make it a pivotal addition to any historical library. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - An Author Biography reveals milestones in the author's life, illuminating the personal insights behind the text. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes)
Table of Contents
Introduction
Power decays from within long before it is conquered from without. Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire pursues this austere insight across centuries, examining how institutions erode, ideals harden into habit, and external shocks expose internal fragility. With measured scrutiny and a sweeping narrative, Gibbon follows Rome from imperial confidence to protracted transformation, inviting readers to consider how empires manage complexity, handle faith and dissent, and transmit culture. The result is not merely a chronicle of events, but a study in historical causation, moral responsibility, and the uneasy dance between continuity and change.
This work is considered a classic because it unites breadth of learning with literary power. Gibbon forged a template for narrative history in English, balancing erudition with clarity and an unmistakable authorial voice. Its themes—imperial overreach, civic virtue, cultural synthesis, and the tension between order and liberty—have proved durable, influencing generations of historians and writers. The book helped establish standards for critical use of sources and for a prose style at once exacting and ironic. Its phrases and framing of problems entered common discourse, and its example encouraged later authors to treat history as both rigorous inquiry and compelling art.
Edward Gibbon, an English historian writing in the Enlightenment, published his work in six volumes between 1776 and 1789. Composed during an age that prized reasoned argument and skeptical analysis, the book reflects the intellectual climate of its time while addressing a subject of vast antiquity. It traces the Roman Empire’s long arc, attending to administration, military organization, law, religion, and culture, and it extends through the transformation of the eastern empire. Gibbon’s purpose was to elucidate how such a formidable polity could change so profoundly over time, using disciplined comparison, extensive reading, and a careful weighing of evidence.
Gibbon’s method was notable for its engagement with classical and ecclesiastical authors, legal compilations, and antiquarian studies, all marshaled through an imposing architecture of notes. He sought to test claims, reconcile discrepancies, and resist easy triumphalism, allowing competing explanations to be set side by side. The narrative moves deliberately from heights of prosperity to periods of instability, not to shock, but to clarify the mechanisms of endurance and failure. Readers encounter strategic decisions, economic pressures, frontier dynamics, and the slow reshaping of civic life, all presented with a scrupulous attention to cause and effect that avoids sensationalism and invites reflection.
Without resorting to grand formulas, the work advances a coherent intention: to account for historical change by examining institutions, beliefs, and incentives over long durations. Gibbon aims to show how power must be renewed by virtue, administration by reform, and tradition by intelligent adaptation. He frames his inquiry to reveal interdependence rather than a single decisive event, offering a study in gradients of decline and reconstruction. The purpose is neither lament nor celebration, but explanation—an effort to make the past intelligible and to caution against complacency, while acknowledging the contingencies and limits that shape human governance.
The book’s classic status also rests on its impact beyond academic history. Its cadenced sentences, dramatic pacing, and deft portraiture shaped the expectations of readers for what history could sound like in English. The very coupling of “decline” with “fall” became a shorthand for complex processes of dissolution, influencing titles, essays, and debates far outside Roman studies. Later narrative historians drew on Gibbon’s synthesis of analytical distance and rhetorical poise, while critics and admirers alike took his work as a benchmark to emulate or revise. In literary history, it stands as a rare fusion of scholarship, philosophy, and stylistic distinction.
At its core, the book prompts questions about the maintenance of order and the fragility of greatness. It weighs the burdens of expansion, the management of borders, and the strains exerted by wealth and diversity. Civic virtue, legal structures, military discipline, and fiscal prudence receive sustained attention, as do the often-overlooked forces of habit and belief. External invasions and internal usurpations appear as tests that reveal preexisting strengths and vulnerabilities. Throughout, Gibbon emphasizes continuity alongside alteration, reminding the reader that transformation can be as formative as dissolution, and that institutions outlive crises by adapting their purposes to new realities.
Religion, learning, and culture occupy prominent places in the analysis, not as digressions, but as engines of historical change. Gibbon handles sacred and secular sources with the same critical posture, situating them within broader social and political contexts. His discussion of religious developments contributed to debates in his own time and has continued to prompt scholarly reassessment. The work neither reduces faith to politics nor isolates it from civic life; rather, it explores how beliefs shape communities, motivate reforms, and sometimes sharpen conflicts. This comprehensive view reinforces the book’s ambition to integrate ideas with institutions across long spans.
One of the work’s distinguishing achievements is its sustained attention to the eastern empire and the Mediterranean world after the political reconfigurations of late antiquity. By following continuity as well as rupture, Gibbon treats administrative adaptation, cultural exchange, and the shifting centers of power with a consistent analytical lens. The narrative encompasses court politics, legal codification, and frontier diplomacy, while keeping sight of the empire’s role as a transmitter of learning. In doing so, it widens the reader’s sense of Rome’s legacy, showing how languages, laws, and memories were preserved, transformed, and redeployed across regions and centuries.
Gibbon’s craft lies not only in synthesis, but in scene-setting and characterization. He blends broad surveys with focused episodes that illuminate turning points in policy or culture without reducing history to anecdote. The pacing alternates between panoramic chapters and tightly argued analyses, maintaining momentum while leaving room for evaluation. His ironic inflections encourage readers to weigh motives against outcomes, and his disciplined prose curbs excess while heightening contrast. The result is a narrative that rewards both continuous reading and selective consultation, enabling newcomers and specialists alike to track themes, compare periods, and test interpretations against accumulated detail.
For contemporary audiences, the work remains relevant because it examines pressures familiar to modern states: administrative complexity, fiscal strain, contested identities, technological shifts, and information management. It asks how large polities keep legitimacy amid change, how they absorb newcomers, and how leadership balances security with liberty. By refusing to treat decline as a single catastrophe, it trains readers to recognize incremental deterioration and renewal alike. Its disciplined skepticism models intellectual responsibility: verify claims, question conveniences, and acknowledge uncertainty. In a world of swift judgments, the book’s patience and scale provide a countermeasure, inviting measured thinking about power and time.
Ultimately, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire endures because it marries an encompassing subject with a clear, exacting mind. It offers themes of ambition and fragility, order and transformation, reason and belief, framed by a prose that carries weight without ornament for its own sake. Readers come away with a sharpened sense of causation and a widened horizon for comparison. Its lasting appeal resides in the breadth of its questions and the steadiness of its method: a commitment to understanding how greatness is built, tested, and remembered, and why that understanding continues to matter.
Synopsis
Edward Gibbon's six-volume history traces the Roman Empire from the second-century zenith to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. He organizes a continuous narrative grounded in ancient sources, inscriptions, and ecclesiastical records, aiming to explain the causes and progress of decline. The work opens by portraying the imperial system at its most stable, emphasizing administrative order, prosperity, and a vast, defensible frontier. Gibbon presents political institutions, military organization, and provincial governance as the framework within which later changes are measured. The study proceeds chronologically, combining civil, military, and religious developments to chart how internal transformations and external pressures altered the empire's durability over time.
He begins with the age of the Antonines, describing the adoptive emperors from Nerva to Marcus Aurelius as effective stewards of a cohesive empire. Frontier wars, such as the Marcomannic conflicts and campaigns against Parthia, test resources but do not shake overall stability. The transition after Marcus Aurelius introduces Commodus, court intrigues, and the growing leverage of the Praetorian Guard. The Severan dynasty consolidates military power, increases soldiers' pay, and elevates the army's political role. The extension of Roman citizenship under Caracalla, shifting fiscal policies, and the prominence of military commanders reshape governance, exposing vulnerabilities that become decisive in the following century.
The third century is depicted as a prolonged crisis marked by rapid imperial turnovers, civil wars, pandemic disease, currency debasement, and assaults along Rhine and Danube frontiers. Provinces fragment into breakaway regimes, notably the Gallic and Palmyrene empires, before Aurelian reunifies the state and fortifies Rome. Diocletian's reforms respond with structural change: the Tetrarchy shares rule among co-emperors, fiscal systems are regularized, bureaucracies expand, and a heightened ceremonial monarchy emerges. Religious policy culminates in the Great Persecution. These measures restore order but institutionalize a more centralized and demanding state, setting conditions for the subsequent reorientation of imperial authority.
Constantine's ascent recasts the empire through civil wars, administrative consolidation, and recognition of Christianity. The Edict of Milan grants religious toleration; episcopal councils, including Nicaea, define doctrine and expand ecclesiastical organization. A new capital at Constantinople symbolizes strategic and cultural shifts toward the eastern provinces. Monetary stabilization with the solidus, court ritual, and dynastic politics strengthen imperial cohesion. After Constantine, contested successions and regional rivalries persist; Julian's brief pagan revival and the conflicts with Persia underscore continued military challenges. By the late fourth century, religious and administrative changes intersect with frontier migrations that introduce new patterns of settlement and service.
Gothic groups, admitted as federates, become central to late imperial defense and instability. The defeat at Adrianople and the career of Theodosius illustrate negotiated accommodation, culminating in a settlement that integrates Gothic forces while acknowledging their autonomy. Theodosius endorses Nicene Christianity and curtails public pagan rites, aligning imperial authority with the church. On his death, the empire is divided between eastern and western courts, a practical administrative separation. Pressures along the Rhine and Danube intensify as Vandals, Sueves, and Alans cross into Roman territories. Generals and court factions compete for influence, shaping policy as the Western Empire's resources contract.
The fifth century narrative follows the West's progressive fragmentation. Alaric's forces enter Italy and sack Rome; imperial control withdraws from Britain and narrows to defensible regions. Germanic kingdoms emerge in Gaul, Spain, and Africa, with the Vandal occupation of Carthage severing vital grain and revenue. Aetius coordinates defenses against Hunnic incursions, culminating at the Catalaunian Plains, yet fiscal constraints and rivalries persist. Maritime raids culminate in the sack of 455, and puppet emperors rely on powerful commanders such as Ricimer. In 476, Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus, while nominal imperial legitimacy continues in the East to represent Roman continuity.
The Eastern Empire preserves Roman institutions and resources, setting the stage for Justinian's ambitious program. His reign undertakes legal codification through the Corpus Juris Civilis, major building works including the Hagia Sophia, and concerted military campaigns to recover Africa, Italy, and parts of Spain under Belisarius and Narses. The Nika riots, protracted wars, and the plague impose heavy costs, exposing the limits of reconquest. Religious controversies, especially over Christological doctrine, complicate provincial cohesion. After Justinian, the empire consolidates defenses, faces Lombard advances in Italy, and adapts administration to shifting populations along the Danube and in the eastern provinces.
Later volumes examine renewed pressure and adaptation. The long war with Sasanian Persia culminates with Heraclius before rapid Arab conquests seize Syria, Egypt, and beyond, transforming imperial boundaries and revenues. The thematic system reorganizes military and fiscal structures; Iconoclasm disputes reshape religious life and imperial-church relations. Bulgars, Slavs, and steppe powers test Balkan frontiers, while missionary activity reaches the Slavs. A Macedonian revival stabilizes administration and culture, yet rivalry with the Latin West grows. The eleventh and twelfth centuries bring the schism, Seljuk victories, and Crusades; the Fourth Crusade captures Constantinople in 1204, establishing a Latin Empire and fragmenting Byzantine authority.
The final narrative traces recovery and contraction. Greek successor states recapture Constantinople in 1261, but fiscal weakness, civil conflict, and territorial losses continue. Ottoman expansion in Anatolia and the Balkans isolates the capital; diplomatic appeals and church union efforts do not reverse the trend. The empire falls in 1453 after prolonged siege, concluding the institutional life of Roman imperial rule. Gibbon attributes the decline to interrelated causes: militarization and indiscipline, burdensome administration, demographic and economic shocks, religious transformations, and sustained external pressures. He emphasizes continuity in law, ecclesiastical structures, and learning, presenting a long transition rather than a single catastrophic collapse.
Historical Context
Edward Gibbon’s narrative is set across the vast expanse of the Roman world from the second century to 1453, tracing imperial power from Rome on the Tiber to Constantinople on the Bosporus. Its geography stretches from Britain and the Rhine to Syria, Egypt, and North Africa, and from the Danube to Armenia and Mesopotamia. The time frame encompasses the classical high empire, late antiquity, and the medieval Byzantine centuries. Urban centers, military frontiers, provincial municipalities, and trade routes form the material stage on which emperors, generals, bishops, and migrating peoples interact, supplying the spaces where institutions, laws, and beliefs evolve and erode.
The book’s setting also shifts with the empire’s political centers: Rome’s senatorial city, Diocletian’s mobile camps, Ravenna’s lagoon refuge, and Constantinople’s fortified metropolis after 330. Public life revolves around the court, the army, and city councils; the countryside bears tax burdens that fund armies and imperial building. Pagan cult sites, synagogues, and churches map religious change in the same spaces. The narrative’s chronology follows inflection points—the Antonine zenith, third-century turbulence, Christianization, barbarian federations, Justinian’s reconquests, and the Ottoman conquest—each anchored in identifiable places, dates, and institutions that define the book’s panoramic historical stage.
The Antonine age (96–180), under Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, and Marcus Aurelius, represents Gibbon’s apex of Roman order. Trajan expanded to Dacia and against Parthia; Hadrian consolidated frontiers; administrative regularity, provincial elites, and legal refinements flourished under jurists such as Gaius. The population benefitted from the Pax Romana, with roads, aqueducts, and urban amenities. Gibbon frames the Antonines as the measure of later decline, frequently contrasting their civic moderation with subsequent despotism. The work connects to this era by presenting it as a baseline: institutional vigor, balanced finances, and disciplined legions against which later crises are judged.
The Crisis of the Third Century (235–284) was marked by rapid imperial turnover, civil war, fiscal debasement, and external pressures. The empire fragmented: the Gallic Empire (260–274) in the West and Queen Zenobia’s Palmyrene Empire (270–273) in the East. Emperors like Gallienus and Aurelian (270–275) struggled to restore unity, culminating in Aurelian’s reconquest and walling of Rome. Gibbon analyzes this disintegration as the product of military anarchy and structural strain on provincial and municipal systems. By highlighting coinage debasement and frontier collapse, the book connects political instability with economic and social stress, foreshadowing permanent transformations.
Diocletian (r. 284–305) restructured governance through the Tetrarchy (293), dividing authority among two Augusti and two Caesars. He reformed taxation, census procedures, and military command, and issued the Edict on Maximum Prices (301) to regulate inflation. The Great Persecution (303–311) targeted Christians across the empire. Gibbon reads Diocletian’s administrative boldness as both remedy and symptom: a bureaucratic, coercive response to systemic weakness. The narrative links his reforms to the survival of the imperial framework but also to heavier fiscal burdens and social rigidity, patterns that, in Gibbon’s view, constrained civic life while preserving imperial shell and army.
Constantine’s rise (victory at the Milvian Bridge, 312) and the Edict of Milan (313) ended official persecution and endowed Christianity with legal toleration; the foundation of Constantinople (330) created a Christianized capital in the East. The Council of Nicaea (325) condemned Arianism; by the Edict of Thessalonica (380), Theodosius I made Nicene Christianity the state religion. Gibbon connects these turning points to lasting institutional change, contending that the alliance of church and empire redirected resources, law, and civic prestige. The book represents this transition as a hinge: religious policy, imperial legitimacy, and urban ceremonial are recast in a Christian imperial idiom.
Gibbon devotes extended analysis to the growth of Christianity, attributing it to zeal, organization, social charity, and promises of salvation, alongside the appeal to urban populations and networks of bishops. He catalogs persecutions under Decius (250) and Valerian (257–260), noting their uneven enforcement and the resilience of communities. He also examines martyr narratives and apologetic literature. The work connects these facts by arguing that the church’s disciplined structure and capacity to mobilize belief filled the vacuum left by waning civic religion. This portrayal, grounded in names and dates, frames Christianity as both spiritual movement and political actor.
Doctrinal conflict and conciliar politics occupy Gibbon’s treatment of the fourth century. The Arian controversy involved figures such as Arius and Athanasius; imperial councils—from Nicaea (325) to Constantinople (381)—produced creeds that defined orthodoxy. Donatist disputes in North Africa reshaped local authority. Theodosius I enforced Nicene doctrine and closed pagan temples, and the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria (391/392) symbolized civic-religious transition. Gibbon presents these events to show how emperors arbitrated theology to secure unity. He connects the book’s argument to the historical record by demonstrating that doctrinal settlement proceeded through court patronage, legal sanctions, and episcopal influence, not abstract consensus alone.
The rise of ecclesiastical wealth and privilege under Theodosius and his successors transformed urban society. Bishops gained juridical roles; clergy received tax exemptions; legislation restricted pagan rites. Monasticism expanded, and pilgrimages reoriented devotional geographies. Gibbon analyzes these developments critically, suggesting that economic transfers to churches, coupled with the ascendancy of ascetic ideals, diverted elite energy from civic administration and military service. He connects this to the narrative of decline by correlating fiscal pressures on curiales (city councilors) with the church’s growing estates, arguing—controversially—that institutional Christianity altered the social fabric on which Roman municipal governance depended.
Barbarian migrations intensified after mid-fourth century. The Goths, pushed by Huns, crossed the Danube in 376; mismanagement provoked revolt. At Adrianople (378), Emperor Valens was killed, and a Roman field army annihilated by Fritigern’s forces. Theodosius I settled Goths as foederati within imperial borders, acknowledging military dependence on allied groups. Gibbon ties Adrianople to the erosion of disciplined legions and the shift toward federate contingents. In his account, the battle’s date and casualties mark a structural breakpoint: imperial strategy adapts to demographic realities, but at the cost of autonomy, illustrating the book’s theme that necessity reshapes institutions.
Rome was sacked in 410 by Alaric’s Visigoths and in 455 by Genseric’s Vandals; Carthage fell to Vandals in 439, permanently diverting Africa’s grain and tax revenues. Attila’s Huns ravaged the Balkans; at the Catalaunian Plains (451), Roman and Gothic forces under Aetius checked them, while Pope Leo I’s embassy (452) is presented as emblematic diplomacy. Gibbon treats these episodes as evidence of Rome’s symbolic vulnerability and logistical strain. He connects them to his broader thesis by showing how fiscal cores—Africa, Italy—became contested, and how negotiation, not just battle, governed imperial survival under fragmented authority.
In 476, Odoacer deposed Romulus Augustulus and ruled Italy as king, acknowledging the Eastern emperor, while Theoderic the Ostrogoth seized Italy in 493, establishing a Romanized Gothic regime at Ravenna. Western imperial titles lapsed, but Roman law and administration persisted in successor kingdoms: Visigothic Toledo, Burgundian Gaul, and Vandal Africa. Gibbon places 476 as a conventional terminus for the Western Empire, connecting it to his theme of continuity through change. The book represents this transition not as instant collapse but as transformation of sovereignty, with Latin culture, municipal institutions, and legal codes enduring under new ethnic elites.
Justinian I (527–565) attempted imperial restoration. His generals Belisarius and Narses destroyed the Vandal kingdom (533–534) and fought the Gothic War in Italy (535–554); the reconquest exhausted resources. The Nika riots (532) devastated Constantinople; rebuilding produced Hagia Sophia (532–537). The Corpus Juris Civilis (529–534) codified Roman law, shaping European jurisprudence. The Plague of Justinian (541–542, with recurrences) decimated populations. Gibbon connects these facts to the paradox of grandeur and overreach: legal and architectural achievements beside fiscal exhaustion and demographic shock. His analysis uses names, dates, and places to show how restoration faltered before structural limits.
Arab conquests transformed the seventh-century Mediterranean. After Heraclius’s victory over Persia, the Byzantines lost Syria and Palestine following Yarmouk (636), Jerusalem (638), Egypt (641), and later Carthage (698). Constantinople survived sieges in 674–678 and 717–718, deploying Greek fire. The empire reorganized into themes (military provinces), and Iconoclasm erupted under Leo III (726), continuing in phases until 787 and again 813–843. Gibbon interprets these events as a decisive contraction of Roman space and revenue, and as institutional adaptation under pressure. The book links doctrinal strife, frontier militarization, and fiscal retrenchment to the long arc of imperial resilience and diminution.
The Crusades redirected Western power toward the Levant, culminating in the Fourth Crusade’s sack of Constantinople (1204) and the Latin Empire (1204–1261). The Byzantine state, restored by Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1261, never recovered its fiscal or military depth. Meanwhile, the Ottoman rise—from Osman I in the late thirteenth century to Mehmed II—tightened pressure: Nicopolis (1396) and Varna (1444) ended Western crusading bids. Constantinople fell in 1453 after siege artillery breached the Theodosian Walls; Emperor Constantine XI died in battle. Gibbon connects these episodes to his terminus, reading 1204 and 1453 as twin catastrophes that reveal internal fractures and external supremacy.
The book functions as a political critique through its analysis of despotism, military anarchy, and fiscal oppression. By tracing how emperors relied on arbitrary violence, inflated bureaucracy, and burdens on curiales and peasants, Gibbon exposes structural injustices that corrode civic virtue. His emphasis on the army’s power to make and unmake emperors speaks to the dangers of militarized politics. He implicitly contrasts constitutional balance with autocracy, using Rome’s fate to question standing armies, patronage, and corruption in any polity. The narrative’s empirical detail—edicts, taxes, requisitions—grounds a broader indictment of governance detached from civic accountability.
Gibbon also advances a social and religious critique, arguing that intolerance, clerical privilege, and fanaticism undermined public life. He highlights legal immunities for clergy, suppression of dissent, and the channeling of wealth into ecclesiastical estates as drivers of inequality and civic decline. While controversial, this reading reflects Enlightenment concerns about confessional states and the fusion of altar and throne. By juxtaposing bishops, monks, senators, and soldiers, the book exposes class divides and competing corporate interests. It thus mirrors the eighteenth-century debate on tolerance and civil society, using Rome and Byzantium to critique coercive orthodoxy, economic exemptions, and politicized belief.
Author Biography
Edward Gibbon was an English historian of the Enlightenment, best known for The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, a six-volume work issued from the mid-1770s to the late 1780s. Celebrated for its vast erudition, lucid architecture, and ironic prose, it reshaped historical writing by uniting rigorous source criticism with literary art. Gibbon also served in Parliament during the later eighteenth century, though he made his enduring mark as a scholar rather than a legislator. His grand narrative traced the Roman world from imperial maturity to its medieval transformations, setting a benchmark for scope, argument, and skeptical inquiry.
Gibbon’s early education was irregular, partly due to fragile health, but a voracious appetite for reading compensated for interruptions. As a teenager he entered Oxford, where he later said he found the instruction uninspiring. A conversion to Roman Catholicism precipitated his removal from the university and a period of study at Lausanne under the Calvinist pastor Daniel Pavillard. There he returned to Protestantism, mastered French, and absorbed continental habits of scholarship. Lausanne introduced him to systematic reading in classical history and theology, sharpening the philological and comparative skills that would later distinguish his historical method and underpin his lifelong commitment to disciplined study.
Gibbon’s first book, Essai sur l’Étude de la Littérature, appeared in the early 1760s and reflected his engagement with classical antiquity and French intellectual debates. Service in a county militia during the Seven Years’ War era fostered habits of order and industry. Extended travel on the Continent, including a formative visit to Rome in the mid-1760s, crystallized his ambition to narrate the empire’s long transformation. Back in Britain, he embarked on years of research, mining Greek and Latin historians, Byzantine compendia, and ecclesiastical sources, often through printed editions and learned collections, while shaping a panoramic design that balanced narrative with analytical digression.
The first volume of Decline and Fall, published in the mid-1770s, was an immediate literary event. Readers praised its sweep, command of sources, and controlled irony, while some condemned its treatment of early Christianity. Gibbon argued that institutional developments, social incentives, and changing mentalities—rather than miracle or singular calamity—helped account for historical change. Clerical critics issued rebuttals, to which he responded with a detailed Vindication of his notes and methods. The controversy reinforced his reputation for caustic yet careful skepticism. He pressed on with sustained archival reading in printed corpora, refining an apparatus of expansive, often witty footnotes that both documented and interpreted.
Alongside scholarship, Gibbon sat in the House of Commons in the late 1770s and early 1780s and briefly held a post connected with trade and colonial administration. He spent much of the 1780s in Lausanne, where a quieter and more economical life favored concentrated work. Volumes II and III appeared in the early 1780s; the concluding volumes followed in the late 1780s, carrying the story through the Byzantine centuries to the fall of Constantinople. Reception remained broadly admiring, though debates persisted over religion’s role, the weight of internal decay versus external pressures, and the moral coloring of his judgments on emperors, armies, and institutions.
Gibbon’s history advanced a multifactorial account of transformation: erosion of civic virtue, fiscal and administrative strain, military evolution, demographic movement, and the cultural effects of religious change. His outlook was shaped by Enlightenment predecessors such as Montesquieu and the philosophical historians of his century, and by English models who prized narrative lucidity. He worked chiefly from printed primary sources, comparing testimonies, weighing probabilities, and policing anachronism. The prose—periodic, balanced, and tinged with irony—made the book a classic of English letters as well as scholarship. His capacious notes built a second, critical text beneath the first, inviting readers to test argument against evidence.
In his later years Gibbon divided time between Lausanne and Britain, returning to London in the early 1790s amid declining health and dying in the mid-1790s. After his death, a close friend and literary executor arranged the publication of Memoirs of My Life and Writings from his autobiographical drafts, illuminating his craft and temperament. Decline and Fall has remained continuously in print, admired for narrative power and breadth while scrutinized for biases characteristic of its age, including its anticlerical tone and classicizing standards. Modern historians debate his causal emphases but continue to learn from his scope, style, and commitment to principled, source-based explanation.
THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE (All 6 Volumes)
Preface By The Editor.
The great work of Gibbon is indispensable to the student of history. The literature of Europe offers no substitute for “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” It has obtained undisputed possession, as rightful occupant, of the vast period which it comprehends. However some subjects, which it embraces, may have undergone more complete investigation, on the general view of the whole period, this history is the sole undisputed authority to which all defer, and from which few appeal to the original writers, or to more modern compilers. The inherent interest of the subject, the inexhaustible labor employed upon it; the immense condensation of matter; the luminous arrangement; the general accuracy; the style, which, however monotonous from its uniform stateliness, and sometimes wearisome from its elaborate ar., is throughout vigorous, animated, often picturesque always commands attention, always conveys its meaning with emphatic energy, describes with singular breadth and fidelity, and generalizes with unrivalled felicity of expression; all these high qualifications have secured, and seem likely to secure, its permanent place in historic literature.
This vast design of Gibbon, the magnificent whole into which he has cast the decay and ruin of the ancient civilization, the formation and birth of the new order of things, will of itself, independent of the laborious execution of his immense plan, render “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” an unapproachable subject to the future historian: * in the eloquent language of his recent French editor, M. Guizot[1]:—
“The gradual decline of the most extraordinary dominion which has ever invaded and oppressed the world; the fall of that immense empire, erected on the ruins of so many kingdoms, republics, and states both barbarous and civilized; and forming in its turn, by its dismemberment, a multitude of states, republics, and kingdoms; the annihilation of the religion of Greece and Rome; the birth and the progress of the two new religions which have shared the most beautiful regions of the earth; the decrepitude of the ancient world, the spectacle of its expiring glory and degenerate manners; the infancy of the modern world, the picture of its first progress, of the new direction given to the mind and character of man — such a subject must necessarily fix the attention and excite the interest of men, who cannot behold with indifference those memorable epochs, during which, in the fine language of Corneille —
‘Un grand destin commence, un grand destin s’acheve.’”
This extent and harmony of design is unquestionably that which distinguishes the work of Gibbon from all other great historical compositions. He has first bridged the abyss between ancient and modern times, and connected together the two great worlds of history. The great advantage which the classical historians possess over those of modern times is in unity of plan, of course greatly facilitated by the narrower sphere to which their researches were confined. Except Herodotus, the great historians of Greece — we exclude the more modern compilers, like Diodorus Siculus — limited themselves to a single period, or at least to the contracted sphere of Grecian affairs. As far as the Barbarians trespassed within the Grecian boundary, or were necessarily mingled up with Grecian politics, they were admitted into the pale of Grecian history; but to Thucydides and to Xenophon, excepting in the Persian inroad of the latter, Greece was the world. Natural unity confined their narrative almost to chronological order, the episodes were of rare occurrence and extremely brief. To the Roman historians the course was equally clear and defined. Rome was their centre of unity; and the uniformity with which the circle of the Roman dominion spread around, the regularity with which their civil polity expanded, forced, as it were, upon the Roman historian that plan which Polybius announces as the subject of his history, the means and the manner by which the whole world became subject to the Roman sway. How different the complicated politics of the European kingdoms! Every national history, to be complete, must, in a certain sense, be the history of Europe; there is no knowing to how remote a quarter it may be necessary to trace our most domestic events; from a country, how apparently disconnected, may originate the impulse which gives its direction to the whole course of affairs.
In imitation of his classical models, Gibbon places Rome as the cardinal point from which his inquiries diverge, and to which they bear constant reference; yet how immeasurable the space over which those inquiries range; how complicated, how confused, how apparently inextricable the causes which tend to the decline of the Roman empire! how countless the nations which swarm forth, in mingling and indistinct hordes, constantly changing the geographical limits — incessantly confounding the natural boundaries! At first sight, the whole period, the whole state of the world, seems to offer no more secure footing to an historical adventurer than the chaos of Milton — to be in a state of irreclaimable disorder, best described in the language of the poet:—
“A darkIllimitable ocean, without bound,Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,And time, and place, are lost: where eldest NightAnd Chaos, ancestors of Nature, holdEternal anarchy, amidst the noiseOf endless wars, and by confusion stand.”
We feel that the unity and harmony of narrative, which shall comprehend this period of social disorganization, must be ascribed entirely to the skill and luminous disposition of the historian. It is in this sublime Gothic architecture of his work, in which the boundless range, the infinite variety, the, at first sight, incongruous gorgeousness of the separate parts, nevertheless are all subordinate to one main and predominant idea, that Gibbon is unrivalled. We cannot but admire the manner in which he masses his materials, and arranges his facts in successive groups, not according to chronological order, but to their moral or political connection; the distinctness with which he marks his periods of gradually increasing decay; and the skill with which, though advancing on separate parallels of history, he shows the common tendency of the slower or more rapid religious or civil innovations. However these principles of composition may demand more than ordinary attention on the part of the reader, they can alone impress upon the memory the real course, and the relative importance of the events. Whoever would justly appreciate the superiority of Gibbon’s lucid arrangement, should attempt to make his way through the regular but wearisome annals of Tillemont, or even the less ponderous volumes of Le Beau. Both these writers adhere, almost entirely, to chronological order; the consequence is, that we are twenty times called upon to break off, and resume the thread of six or eight wars in different parts of the empire; to suspend the operations of a military expedition for a court intrigue; to hurry away from a siege to a council; and the same page places us in the middle of a campaign against the barbarians, and in the depths of the Monophysite controversy[2]. In Gibbon it is not always easy to bear in mind the exact dates but the course of events is ever clear and distinct; like a skilful general, though his troops advance from the most remote and opposite quarters, they are constantly bearing down and concentrating themselves on one point — that which is still occupied by the name, and by the waning power of Rome. Whether he traces the progress of hostile religions, or leads from the shores of the Baltic, or the verge of the Chinese empire, the successive hosts of barbarians — though one wave has hardly burst and discharged itself, before another swells up and approaches — all is made to flow in the same direction, and the impression which each makes upon the tottering fabric of the Roman greatness, connects their distant movements, and measures the relative importance assigned to them in the panoramic history. The more peaceful and didactic episodes on the development of the Roman law, or even on the details of ecclesiastical history[3], interpose themselves as resting-places or divisions between the periods of barbaric invasion. In short, though distracted first by the two capitals, and afterwards by the formal partition of the empire, the extraordinary felicity of arrangement maintains an order and a regular progression. As our horizon expands to reveal to us the gathering tempests which are forming far beyond the boundaries of the civilized world — as we follow their successive approach to the trembling frontier — the compressed and receding line is still distinctly visible; though gradually dismembered and the broken fragments assuming the form of regular states and kingdoms, the real relation of those kingdoms to the empire is maintained and defined; and even when the Roman dominion has shrunk into little more than the province of Thrace — when the name of Rome, confined, in Italy, to the walls of the city — yet it is still the memory, the shade of the Roman greatness, which extends over the wide sphere into which the historian expands his later narrative; the whole blends into the unity, and is manifestly essential to the double catastrophe of his tragic drama.
But the amplitude, the magnificence, or the harmony of design, are, though imposing, yet unworthy claims on our admiration, unless the details are filled up with correctness and accuracy. No writer has been more severely tried on this point than Gibbon. He has undergone the triple scrutiny of theological zeal quickened by just resentment, of literary emulation, and of that mean and invidious vanity which delights in detecting errors in writers of established fame. On the result of the trial, we may be permitted to summon competent witnesses before we deliver our own judgment.
M. Guizot, in his preface, after stating that in France and Germany, as well as in England, in the most enlightened countries of Europe, Gibbon is constantly cited as an authority, thus proceeds:—
“I have had occasion, during my labors, to consult the writings of philosophers, who have treated on the finances of the Roman empire; of scholars, who have investigated the chronology; of theologians, who have searched the depths of ecclesiastical history; of writers on law, who have studied with care the Roman jurisprudence; of Orientalists, who have occupied themselves with the Arabians and the Koran; of modern historians, who have entered upon extensive researches touching the crusades and their influence; each of these writers has remarked and pointed out, in the ‘History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,’ some negligences, some false or imperfect views some omissions, which it is impossible not to suppose voluntary; they have rectified some facts combated with advantage some assertions; but in general they have taken the researches and the ideas of Gibbon, as points of departure, or as proofs of the researches or of the new opinions which they have advanced.”
M. Guizot goes on to state his own impressions on reading Gibbon’s history, and no authority will have greater weight with those to whom the extent and accuracy of his historical researches are known:—
“After a first rapid perusal, which allowed me to feel nothing but the interest of a narrative, always animated, and, notwithstanding its extent and the variety of objects which it makes to pass before the view, always perspicuous, I entered upon a minute examination of the details of which it was composed; and the opinion which I then formed was, I confess, singularly severe. I discovered, in certain chapters, errors which appeared to me sufficiently important and numerous to make me believe that they had been written with extreme negligence; in others, I was struck with a certain tinge of partiality and prejudice, which imparted to the exposition of the facts that want of truth and justice, which the English express by their happy term misrepresentation. Some imperfect (tronquees) quotations; some passages, omitted unintentionally or designedly cast a suspicion on the honesty (bonne foi) of the author; and his violation of the first law of history — increased to my eye by the prolonged attention with which I occupied myself with every phrase, every note, every reflection — caused me to form upon the whole work, a judgment far too rigorous. After having finished my labors, I allowed some time to elapse before I reviewed the whole. A second attentive and regular perusal of the entire work, of the notes of the author, and of those which I had thought it right to subjoin, showed me how much I had exaggerated the importance of the reproaches which Gibbon really deserved; I was struck with the same errors, the same partiality on certain subjects; but I had been far from doing adequate justice to the immensity of his researches, the variety of his knowledge, and above all, to that truly philosophical discrimination (justesse d’esprit) which judges the past as it would judge the present; which does not permit itself to be blinded by the clouds which time gathers around the dead, and which prevent us from seeing that, under the toga, as under the modern dress, in the senate as in our councils, men were what they still are, and that events took place eighteen centuries ago, as they take place in our days. I then felt that his book, in spite of its faults, will always be a noble work — and that we may correct his errors and combat his prejudices, without ceasing to admit that few men have combined, if we are not to say in so high a degree, at least in a manner so complete, and so well regulated, the necessary qualifications for a writer of history.”
The present editor has followed the track of Gibbon through many parts of his work; he has read his authorities with constant reference to his pages, and must pronounce his deliberate judgment, in terms of the highest admiration as to his general accuracy. Many of his seeming errors are almost inevitable from the close condensation of his matter. From the immense range of his history, it was sometimes necessary to compress into a single sentence, a whole vague and diffuse page of a Byzantine chronicler. Perhaps something of importance may have thus escaped, and his expressions may not quite contain the whole substance of the passage from which they are taken. His limits, at times, compel him to sketch; where that is the case, it is not fair to expect the full details of the finished picture. At times he can only deal with important results; and in his account of a war, it sometimes requires great attention to discover that the events which seem to be comprehended in a single campaign, occupy several years. But this admirable skill in selecting and giving prominence to the points which are of real weight and importance — this distribution of light and shade — though perhaps it may occasionally betray him into vague and imperfect statements, is one of the highest excellencies of Gibbon’s historic manner. It is the more striking, when we pass from the works of his chief authorities, where, after laboring through long, minute, and wearisome descriptions of the accessary and subordinate circumstances, a single unmarked and undistinguished sentence, which we may overlook from the inattention of fatigue, contains the great moral and political result.
Gibbon’s method of arrangement, though on the whole most favorable to the clear comprehension of the events, leads likewise to apparent inaccuracy. That which we expect to find in one part is reserved for another. The estimate which we are to form, depends on the accurate balance of statements in remote parts of the work; and we have sometimes to correct and modify opinions, formed from one chapter by those of another. Yet, on the other hand, it is astonishing how rarely we detect contradiction; the mind of the author has already harmonized the whole result to truth and probability; the general impression is almost invariably the same. The quotations of Gibbon have likewise been called in question; — I have, in general, been more inclined to admire their exactitude, than to complain of their indistinctness, or incompleteness. Where they are imperfect, it is commonly from the study of brevity, and rather from the desire of compressing the substance of his notes into pointed and emphatic sentences, than from dishonesty, or uncandid suppression of truth.
These observations apply more particularly to the accuracy and fidelity of the historian as to his facts; his inferences, of course, are more liable to exception. It is almost impossible to trace the line between unfairness and unfaithfulness; between intentional misrepresentation and undesigned false coloring. The relative magnitude and importance of events must, in some respect, depend upon the mind before which they are presented; the estimate of character, on the habits and feelings of the reader. Christians, like M. Guizot and ourselves, will see some things, and some persons, in a different light from the historian of the Decline and Fall. We may deplore the bias of his mind; we may ourselves be on our guard against the danger of being misled, and be anxious to warn less wary readers against the same perils; but we must not confound this secret and unconscious departure from truth, with the deliberate violation of that veracity which is the only title of an historian to our confidence. Gibbon, it may be fearlessly asserted, is rarely chargeable even with the suppression of any material fact, which bears upon individual character; he may, with apparently invidious hostility, enhance the errors and crimes, and disparage the virtues of certain persons; yet, in general, he leaves us the materials for forming a fairer judgment; and if he is not exempt from his own prejudices, perhaps we might write passions, yet it must be candidly acknowledged, that his philosophical bigotry is not more unjust than the theological partialities of those ecclesiastical writers who were before in undisputed possession of this province of history.
We are thus naturally led to that great misrepresentation which pervades his history — his false estimate of the nature and influence of Christianity.
But on this subject some preliminary caution is necessary, lest that should be expected from a new edition, which it is impossible that it should completely accomplish. We must first be prepared with the only sound preservative against the false impression likely to be produced by the perusal of Gibbon; and we must see clearly the real cause of that false impression. The former of these cautions will be briefly suggested in its proper place, but it may be as well to state it, here, somewhat more at length. The art of Gibbon, or at least the unfair impression produced by his two memorable chapters, consists in his confounding together, in one indistinguishable mass, the origin and apostolic propagation of the new religion, with its later progress. No argument for the divine authority of Christianity has been urged with greater force, or traced with higher eloquence, than that deduced from its primary development, explicable on no other hypothesis than a heavenly origin, and from its rapid extension through great part of the Roman empire. But this argument — one, when confined within reasonable limits, of unanswerable force — becomes more feeble and disputable in proportion as it recedes from the birthplace, as it were, of the religion. The further Christianity advanced, the more causes purely human were enlisted in its favor; nor can it be doubted that those developed with such artful exclusiveness by Gibbon did concur most essentially to its establishment. It is in the Christian dispensation, as in the material world. In both it is as the great First Cause, that the Deity is most undeniably manifest. When once launched in regular motion upon the bosom of space, and endowed with all their properties and relations of weight and mutual attraction, the heavenly bodies appear to pursue their courses according to secondary laws, which account for all their sublime regularity. So Christianity proclaims its Divine Author chiefly in its first origin and development. When it had once received its impulse from above — when it had once been infused into the minds of its first teachers — when it had gained full possession of the reason and affections of the favored few — it might be — and to the Protestant, the rationa Christian, it is impossible to define when it really was — left to make its way by its native force, under the ordinary secret agencies of all-ruling Providence. The main question, the divine origin of the religion, was dexterously eluded, or speciously conceded by Gibbon; his plan enabled him to commence his account, in most parts, below the apostolic times; and it was only by the strength of the dark coloring with which he brought out the failings and the follies of the succeeding ages, that a shadow of doubt and suspicion was thrown back upon the primitive period of Christianity.
“The theologian,” says Gibbon, “may indulge the pleasing task of describing religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity; a more melancholy duty is imposed upon the historian:— he must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth among a weak and degenerate race of beings.” Divest this passage of the latent sarcasm betrayed by the subsequent tone of the whole disquisition, and it might commence a Christian history written in the most Christian spirit of candor. But as the historian, by seeming to respect, yet by dexterously confounding the limits of the sacred land, contrived to insinuate that it was an Utopia which had no existence but in the imagination of the theologian — as he suggested rather than affirmed that the days of Christian purity were a kind of poetic golden age; — so the theologian, by venturing too far into the domain of the historian, has been perpetually obliged to contest points on which he had little chance of victory — to deny facts established on unshaken evidence — and thence, to retire, if not with the shame of defeat, yet with but doubtful and imperfect success.
Paley, with his intuitive sagacity, saw through the difficulty of answering Gibbon by the ordinary arts of controversy; his emphatic sentence, “Who can refute a sneer?” contains as much truth as point. But full and pregnant as this phrase is, it is not quite the whole truth; it is the tone in which the progress of Christianity is traced, in comparison with the rest of the splendid and prodigally ornamented work, which is the radical defect in the “Decline and Fall.” Christianity alone receives no embellishment from the magic of Gibbon’s language; his imagination is dead to its moral dignity; it is kept down by a general zone of jealous disparagement, or neutralized by a painfully elaborate exposition of its darker and degenerate periods. There are occasions, indeed, when its pure and exalted humanity, when its manifestly beneficial influence, can compel even him, as it were, to fairness, and kindle his unguarded eloquence to its usual fervor; but, in general, he soon relapses into a frigid apathy; affects an ostentatiously severe impartiality; notes all the faults of Christians in every age with bitter and almost malignant sarcasm; reluctantly, and with exception and reservation, admits their claim to admiration. This inextricable bias appears even to influence his manner of composition. While all the other assailants of the Roman empire, whether warlike or religious, the Goth, the Hun, the Arab, the Tartar, Alaric and Attila, Mahomet, and Zengis, and Tamerlane, are each introduced upon the scene almost with dramatic animation — their progress related in a full, complete, and unbroken narrative — the triumph of Christianity alone takes the form of a cold and critical disquisition. The successes of barbarous energy and brute force call forth all the consummate skill of composition; while the moral triumphs of Christian benevolence — the tranquil heroism of endurance, the blameless purity, the contempt of guilty fame and of honors destructive to the human race, which, had they assumed the proud name of philosophy, would have been blazoned in his brightest words, because they own religion as their principle — sink into narrow asceticism. The glories of Christianity, in short, touch on no chord in the heart of the writer; his imagination remains unkindled; his words, though they maintain their stately and measured march, have become cool, argumentative, and inanimate. Who would obscure one hue of that gorgeous coloring in which Gibbon has invested the dying forms of Paganism, or darken one paragraph in his splendid view of the rise and progress of Mahometanism? But who would not have wished that the same equal justice had been done to Christianity; that its real character and deeply penetrating influence had been traced with the same philosophical sagacity, and represented with more sober, as would become its quiet course, and perhaps less picturesque, but still with lively and attractive, descriptiveness? He might have thrown aside, with the same scorn, the mass of ecclesiastical fiction which envelops the early history of the church, stripped off the legendary romance, and brought out the facts in their primitive nakedness and simplicity — if he had but allowed those facts the benefit of the glowing eloquence which he denied to them alone. He might have annihilated the whole fabric of post-apostolic miracles, if he had left uninjured by sarcastic insinuation those of the New Testament; he might have cashiered, with Dodwell, the whole host of martyrs, which owe their existence to the prodigal invention of later days, had he but bestowed fair room, and dwelt with his ordinary energy on the sufferings of the genuine witnesses to the truth of Christianity, the Polycarps, or the martyrs of Vienne.
And indeed, if, after all, the view of the early progress of Christianity be melancholy and humiliating we must beware lest we charge the whole of this on the infidelity of the historian. It is idle, it is disingenuous, to deny or to dissemble the early depravations of Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure from its primitive simplicity and purity, still more, from its spirit of universal love. It may be no unsalutary lesson to the Christian world, that this silent, this unavoidable, perhaps, yet fatal change shall have been drawn by an impartial, or even an hostile hand. The Christianity of every age may take warning, lest by its own narrow views, its want of wisdom, and its want of charity, it give the same advantage to the future unfriendly historian, and disparage the cause of true religion.
The design of the present edition is partly corrective, partly supplementary: corrective, by notes, which point out (it is hoped, in a perfectly candid and dispassionate spirit with no desire but to establish the truth) such inaccuracies or misstatements as may have been detected, particularly with regard to Christianity; and which thus, with the previous caution, may counteract to a considerable extent the unfair and unfavorable impression created against rational religion: supplementary, by adding such additional information as the editor’s reading may have been able to furnish, from original documents or books, not accessible at the time when Gibbon wrote.
The work originated in the editor’s habit of noting on the margin of his copy of Gibbon references to such authors as had discovered errors, or thrown new light on the subjects treated by Gibbon. These had grown to some extent, and seemed to him likely to be of use to others. The annotations of M. Guizot also appeared to him worthy of being better known to the English public than they were likely to be, as appended to the French translation.
The chief works from which the editor has derived his materials are:
I. The French translation, with notes by M. Guizot; 2d edition, Paris, 1828. The editor has translated almost all the notes of M. Guizot. Where he has not altogether agreed with him, his respect for the learning and judgment of that writer has, in general, induced him to retain the statement from which he has ventured to differ, with the grounds on which he formed his own opinion. In the notes on Christianity, he has retained all those of M. Guizot, with his own, from the conviction, that on such a subject, to many, the authority of a French statesman, a Protestant, and a rational and sincere Christian, would appear more independent and unbiassed, and therefore be more commanding, than that of an English clergyman.
The editor has not scrupled to transfer the notes of M. Guizot to the present work. The well-known zeal for knowledge, displayed in all the writings of that distinguished historian, has led to the natural inference, that he would not be displeased at the attempt to make them of use to the English readers of Gibbon. The notes of M. Guizot are signed with the letter G.
II. The German translation, with the notes of Wenck. Unfortunately this learned translator died, after having completed only the first volume; the rest of the work was executed by a very inferior hand.
The notes of Wenck are extremely valuable; many of them have been adopted by M. Guizot; they are distinguished by the letter W. 1
III. The new edition of Le Beau’s “Histoire du Bas Empire, with notes by M. St. Martin, and M. Brosset.” That distinguished Armenian scholar, M. St. Martin (now, unhappily, deceased) had added much information from Oriental writers, particularly from those of Armenia, as well as from more general sources. Many of his observations have been found as applicable to the work of Gibbon as to that of Le Beau.
IV. The editor has consulted the various answers made to Gibbon on the first appearance of his work; he must confess, with little profit. They were, in general, hastily compiled by inferior and now forgotten writers, with the exception of Bishop Watson, whose able apology is rather a general argument, than an examination of misstatements. The name of Milner stands higher with a certain class of readers, but will not carry much weight with the severe investigator of history.
V. Some few classical works and fragments have come to light, since the appearance of Gibbon’s History, and have been noticed in their respective places; and much use has been made, in the latter volumes particularly, of the increase to our stores of Oriental literature. The editor cannot, indeed, pretend to have followed his author, in these gleanings, over the whole vast field of his inquiries; he may have overlooked or may not have been able to command some works, which might have thrown still further light on these subjects; but he trusts that what he has adduced will be of use to the student of historic truth.
The editor would further observe, that with regard to some other objectionable passages, which do not involve misstatement or inaccuracy, he has intentionally abstained from directing particular attention towards them by any special protest.
The editor’s notes are marked M.
A considerable part of the quotations (some of which in the later editions had fallen into great confusion) have been verified, and have been corrected by the latest and best editions of the authors.
June, 1845.
In this new edition, the text and the notes have been carefully revised, the latter by the editor.
Some additional notes have been subjoined, distinguished by the signature M. 1845.
1 The editor regrets that he has not been able to find the Italian translation, mentioned by Gibbon himself with some respect. It is not in our great libraries, the Museum or the Bodleian; and he has never found any bookseller in London who has seen it.]
