Book
1776
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Edward Gibbon
Argues Rome fell to a slow internal corrosion of civic virtue compounded by Christianity rather than to any single external blow — a thesis modern historians largely reject, though it still frames the question.
Read itHow it opens
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 opening of the work itself, so you can judge the prose rather than our description of it.
Where it is now wrong
Gibbon's central explanation is no longer accepted. He argued Christianity drained Rome's civic and military vigour; modern work treats the western collapse as fiscal strain, civil war, and the settlement of barbarian groups the empire had itself recruited.
Before you start
- Assumes
- a working outline of Roman history, and that Gibbon's judgements are as much the subject as the events
Filed under Ancient Rome in History.