The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Edward Gibbon First Edition

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The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings. Volumes II and III were published in 1781; volumes IV, V, and VI in 1788-1789. The original volumes were published in quarto sections, a common publishing practice of the time. The work covers the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early Christianity and then of the Roman State Church, and the history of Europe, and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire in the East and West. Because of its heavy use of primary sources, unusual at the time, its methodology became a model for later historians. This led to Gibbon's being called the first "modern historian of ancient Rome". His work remains a great literary achievement and a very readable introduction to the period, but considerable progress has since been made in history and archaeology, and his interpretations no longer represent current academic knowledge or thought. In The World of Late Antiquity (1971), Peter Brown offers an alternative interpretation of the period between the second and eighth centuries AD, and Framing the Early Middle Ages (2005) by Christopher Wickham presents hitherto unavailable evidence from both documentary and archaeological sources.

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Thesis

Gibbon offers an explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to attempt it.

According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens.

He began an ongoing controversy about the role of Christianity, but he gave great weight to other causes of internal decline and to attacks from outside the Empire.

The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors, anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.

Like other Enlightenment thinkers and British citizens of the age steeped in institutional anti-Catholicism, Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden, superstitious Dark Age. It was not until his own era, the "Age of Reason," with its emphasis on rational thought, it was believed, that human history could resume its progress.

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Style

Gibbon's tone was detached, dispassionate, and yet critical. He can lapse into moralisation and aphorism:

[A]s long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.

The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people.

[H]istory [...] is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.

If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery [of gunpowder] with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.

Citations and footnotes

Gibbon provides the reader with a glimpse of his thought process with extensive notes along the body of the text, a precursor to the modern use of footnotes. Gibbon's footnotes are famous for their idiosyncratic and often humorous style, and have been called "Gibbon's table talk." They provide an entertaining moral commentary on both ancient Rome and 18th-century Great Britain. This technique enabled Gibbon to compare ancient Rome to his own contemporary world. Gibbon's work advocates a rationalist and progressive view of history.

Gibbon's citations provide in-depth detail regarding his use of sources for his work, which included documents dating back to ancient Rome. The detail within his asides and his care in noting the importance of each document is a precursor to modern-day historical footnoting methodology.

The work is notable for its erratic but exhaustively documented notes and research. John Bury, following him 113 years later with his own History of the Later Roman Empire, commended the depth and accuracy of Gibbon's work. Unusually for 18th century historians, Gibbon was not content with second-hand accounts when the primary sources were accessible. "I have always endeavoured", Gibbon wrote, "to draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as a sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and that, if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend." The Decline and Fall is a literary monument and a massive step forward in historical method.

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Criticism

Numerous tracts were published criticising his work. In response, Gibbon defended his work with the 1779 publication of, A Vindication ... of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. His remarks on Christianity aroused particularly vigorous attacks, but in the mid-twentieth century, at least one author claimed that "church historians allow the substantial justness of [Gibbon's] main positions."

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Gibbon's views on religion

Criticism of Quran and Muhammad

Gibbon's comments on the Quran and Muhammad reflected his view of the secular, rather than divine, origin of the text. He outlined in chapter 33 the widespread tale, possibly Jewish in origin, of the Seven Sleepers, and remarked "This popular tale, which Mahomet might learn when he drove his camels to the fairs of Syria, is introduced, as a divine revelation, into the Quran." His presentation of Muhammad's life again reflected his secular approach: "in his private conduct, Mahomet indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from the laws which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather than the envy, of the devout Mussulmans."

Views on Judaism and Jews

Gibbon described the Jews as "a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but also of humankind".

Number of Christian martyrs

Gibbon challenged Church history by estimating far smaller numbers of Christian martyrs than had been traditionally accepted. The Church's version of its early history had rarely been questioned before. Gibbon, however, knew that modern Church writings were secondary sources, and he shunned them in favor of primary sources.

Christianity as a contributor to the fall and to stability: chapters XV, XVI

Historian S.P. Foster says that Gibbon:

blamed the otherworldly preoccupations of Christianity for the decline of the Roman empire, heaped scorn and abuse on the church, and sneered at the entirety of monasticism as a dreary, superstition-ridden enterprise. The Decline and Fall compares Christianity invidiously with both the pagan religions of Rome and the religion of Islam.

Volume I was originally published in sections, as was common for large works at the time. The first two were well received and widely praised. The last quarto in Volume I, especially Chapters XV and XVI, was highly controversial, and Gibbon was attacked as a "paganist". Gibbon thought that Christianity had hastened the Fall, but also ameliorated the results:

As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise or scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse of Christianity, had some influence on the decline and fall of the Roman empire. The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister: a large portion of public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion; and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity. Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition, kindled the flame of theological discord; the church, and even the state, were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny; and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country. Yet party-spirit, however pernicious or absurd, is a principle of union as well as of dissension. The bishops, from eighteen hundred pulpits, inculcated the duty of passive obedience to a lawful and orthodox sovereign; their frequent assemblies and perpetual correspondence maintained the communion of distant churches; and the benevolent temper of the Gospel was strengthened, though confirmed, by the spiritual alliance of the Catholics. The sacred indolence of the monks was devoutly embraced by a servile and effeminate age; but if superstition had not afforded a decent retreat, the same vices would have tempted the unworthy Romans to desert, from baser motives, the standard of the republic. Religious precepts are easily obeyed which indulge and sanctify the natural inclinations of their votaries; but the pure and genuine influence of Christianity may be traced in its beneficial, though imperfect, effects on the barbarian proselytes of the North. If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors (chap. 38).

Voltaire was deemed to have influenced Gibbon's claim that Christianity was a contributor to the fall of the Roman Empire. As one pro-Christian commenter put it in 1840:

As Christianity advances, disasters befall the [Roman] empire--arts, science, literature, decay--barbarism and all its revolting concomitants are made to seem the consequences of its decisive triumph--and the unwary reader is conducted, with matchless dexterity, to the desired conclusion--the abominable Manicheism of Candide, and, in fact, of all the productions of Voltaire's historic school--viz., "that instead of being a merciful, ameliorating, and benignant visitation, the religion of Christians would rather seem to be a scourge sent on man by the author of all evil."

Tolerant paganism

Gibbon wrote:

The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosophers as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.

He has been criticized for his portrayal of Paganism as tolerant and Christianity as intolerant. In an article that appeared in 1996 in the journal Past & Present, H.A. Drake challenges an understanding of religious persecution in ancient Rome, which he considers to be the "conceptual scheme" that was used by historians to deal with the topic for the last 200 years, and whose most eminent representative is Gibbon. Drake counters:

With such deft strokes, Gibbon enters into a conspiracy with his readers: unlike the credulous masses, he and we are cosmopolitans who know the uses of religion as an instrument of social control. So doing, Gibbon skirts a serious problem: for three centuries prior to Constantine, the tolerant pagans who people the Decline and Fall were the authors of several major persecutions, in which Christians were the victims. ... Gibbon covered this embarrassing hole in his argument with an elegant demur. Rather than deny the obvious, he adroitly masked the question by transforming his Roman magistrates into models of Enlightenment rulers--reluctant persecutors, too sophisticated to be themselves religious zealots.

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Misinterpretation of Byzantium

Others such as John Julius Norwich, despite their admiration for his furthering of historical methodology, consider Gibbon's hostile views on the Byzantine Empire flawed and blame him somewhat for the lack of interest shown in the subject throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. This view might well be admitted by Gibbon himself: "But it is not my intention to expatiate with the same minuteness on the whole series of the Byzantine history." However the Russian historian George Ostrogorsky writes, "Gibbon and Lebeau were genuine historians--and Gibbon a very great one--and their works, in spite of factual inadequacy, rank high for their presentation of their material."

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Gibbon's reflections

Gibbon's initial plan was to write a history "of the decline and fall of the city of Rome", and only later expanded his scope to the whole Roman Empire.

Although he published other books, Gibbon devoted much of his life to this one work (1772-89). His autobiography Memoirs of My Life and Writings is devoted largely to his reflections on how the book virtually became his life. He compared the publication of each succeeding volume to a newborn child.

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Editions

Gibbon continued to revise and change his work even after publication. The complexities of the problem are addressed in Womersley's introduction and appendices to his complete edition.

In-print complete editions
- J.B. Bury, ed., 7 volumes (London: Methuen, 1909-1914), currently reprinted (New York: AMS Press, 1974). ISBN 0-404-02820-9.
- Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., 6 volumes (New York: Everyman's Library, 1993-1994). The text, including Gibbon's notes, is from Bury but without his notes. ISBN 0-679-42308-7 (vols. 1-3); ISBN 0-679-43593-X (vols. 4-6).
- David Womersley, ed., 3 volumes. hardback-(London: Allen Lane, 1994); paperback (New York: Penguin Books, 2005; 1994). Includes the original index, and the Vindication (1779), which Gibbon wrote in response to attacks on his caustic portrayal of Christianity. The 2005 print includes minor revisions and a new chronology. ISBN 0-7139-9124-0 (3360 p.); ISBN 0-14-043393-7 (v. 1, 1232 p.); ISBN 0-14-043394-5 (v. 2, 1024 p.); ISBN 0-14-043395-3 (v. 3, 1360 p.)
In-print abridgements
- David Womersley, ed., 1 volume (New York: Penguin Books, 2000). Includes all footnotes and seventeen of the original seventy-one chapters. ISBN 0-14-043764-9 (848 p.)
- Hans-Friedrich Mueller, ed., one volume abridgment (New York: Random House, 2003). Includes excerpts from all seventy-one chapters. It eliminates footnotes, geographic surveys, details of battle formations, long narratives of military campaigns, ethnographies and genealogies. Based on the Rev. H.H. [Dean] Milman edition of 1845 (see also Gutenberg etext edition). ISBN 0-375-75811-9, (trade paper, 1312 p.); ISBN 0-345-47884-3 (mass market paper, 1536 p.)

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Legacy

Many writers have used variations on the series title (including using "Rise and Fall" in place of "Decline and Fall"), especially when dealing with large nations or empires. Piers Brendon notes that Gibbon's work, "became the essential guide for Britons anxious to plot their own imperial trajectory. They found the key to understanding the British Empire in the ruins of Rome."

An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. Designed To Shew How The Prosperity Of The British Empire May Be Prolonged (1805), William Playfair
The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1868), Jefferson Davis
The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody (1950), by the satirist Will Cuppy
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1959), William Shirer
The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), Jane Jacobs
The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire (1970), John Toland (author)
The Decline and Fall of Science (1976), Celia Green
The Ottoman Centuries: The Rise and Fall of the Turkish Empire (1977), Lord Kinross
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Church (1983), Malachi Martin
Decline and Fall of the Freudian Empire (1986), Hans Eysenck
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), Paul Kennedy
The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (1990), David Cannadine
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire (1998), Lawrence James
The Decline and Fall of Roman Britain (2000), Neil Faulkner
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (2002), Niall Ferguson
The Decline and Fall of the Catholic Church in America (2003), David Carlin
The Decline and Fall of the British Empire (2007), Piers Brendon
Three victories and a defeat: the rise and fall of the first British Empire (2008), Brendan Simms
Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire (2008), Parvaneh Pourshariati
Decline and Fall of the American Republic (2010), Bruce Ackerman
Triumph and Tragedy: The Rise and Fall of Rome's Immortal Emperors (2010), Alexander Canduci
The Rise and Fall of the British Empire: Mercantilism, Diplomacy and the Colonies (2015), Phillip J. Smith

and in film:

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
The Decline of Western Civilization (1981), Penelope Spheeris
The Decline of the American Empire (1986), Denys Arcand

and in television:

Ancient Rome: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (2006)

The title and author are also cited in Noël Coward's comedic poem "I Went to a Marvellous Party". And in the poem "The Foundation of Science Fiction Success", Isaac Asimov acknowledged that his Foundation series--an epic tale of the fall and rebuilding of a galactic empire--was written "with a tiny bit of cribbin' / from the works of Edward Gibbon".

In 1995, an established journal of classical scholarship, Classics Ireland, published punk musician's Iggy Pop's reflections on the applicability of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to the modern world in a short article, Caesar Lives, (vol. 2, 1995) in which he noted

America is Rome. Of course, why shouldn't it be? We are all Roman children, for better or worse ... I learn much about the way our society really works, because the system-origins - military, religious, political, colonial, agricultural, financial - are all there to be scrutinised in their infancy. I have gained perspective.

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Notes

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References

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External links

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire author record at Project Gutenberg. Based on the Rev. H.H. Milman edition of 1845.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire from the Online Library of Liberty. The J. B. Bury edition, in 12 volumes.
Memoirs of My Life and Writings at Project Gutenberg
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Google Book Search (pdf version)
DeclineandFallResources.com: Maps, Translations, Illustrations
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Audiobook from the Internet Archive.
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1 vol. 2[1] vol. 3 vol. 4 vol. 5 vol. 6: audio recordings at Librivox.org

Source of the article : Wikipedia

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Sunday, July 22, 2018