After his death resistance and order were no more

[ewx]

Late last year I decided to spend 2004 reading Edward Gibbon's The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire, a monumental work of history written in the late 18th century. Last night I finished it.

Gibbon picks up the story of the Empire at roughly the time of the recent film Gladiator. (Indeed, he mentions a Maximus who achieved victories over the Germans, and who was murdered by Commodus.) We see the partition of the Empire, the introduction of Christianity as a state religion, the establishment of Constantine's New Rome on the Bosphorus. The West falls under the control of a succession of Germanic strong-men, who ultimately discard the thin fiction of imperial loyalty and call themselves kings. Gibbon argues that Christianity weakened the Empire and thus contributed to the fall of the West; but allows that its introduction among the barbarians softened the fall. I am not so convinced by the former; the latter may have something to it.

The eastern part of the empire survived for another millenium, according to Gibbon "in a state of premature and perpetual decay"; a rather less positive view than is popular today, and Gibbon does not emphasize the successes of the Macedonian emperors as strongly as does (for instance) John Julius Norwich. We see endless religious argument, both internally and with the western Christians; and from this and the disaster of Manzikert the end seems inevitable.

The twilight of the Empire was an embarassment compared to the past; the Ottoman Sultan called himself Caesar and the last Greek Emperors were de facto vassals. Only the final defence of Constantinople redeemed; after a seige of over fifty days, a battle in which muskets and cannon were used alongside swords and greek fire, the walls were breached, and Constantine XI Palaeologus cast off the purple and died in the hopeless struggle.

Gibbon is very readable indeed. While there are archaisms to modern eyes his language has not aged in any important way in the last two centuries. He is a master of sarcasm and wit, and his legendarily numerous footnotes are routinely worth the interruption (something modern devotees of the style all too rarely achieve). I cannot accuse him of needless verbosity, but must note that the Decline And Fall is very, very long.

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

This is fair comment about the style not ageing - I read it on summer holiday when I was little and never realised it was an old book until much later.