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The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
“Collector’s Edition” The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 4 1813 [Premium Leather Bound]
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First published January 1, 1993
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June 13, 2019
Enough insight into how power and cultures still work to get you through the succession of characters you don’t care about, either.
October 13, 2015
I own a five-volume edition of Gibbon from the 19th Century, inherited from some worthy on my paternal grandmother's side. It came from him to her, to my father, and to me, surviving multiple trips across the continent of America and being stuck in basement boxes several times. I must be the first to have read it entire, because some of the pages were uncut. I like to think it was waiting for me; it's appropriate to the scale of the book (a novel where, as Borges says, the protagonists are the nations of the world) that the host of this beautiful parasite should be an entire family tree, rather than a single organism. The fifth volume is the notes, which has necessitated reading with two volumes at hand at a time (because reading Gibbon without notes is like eating food without salt); each year, these past 4 years, I've read one volume plus one-quarter of the fifth, and I am now finished. I'm a slow reader who likes long books, and it's always a strange feeling to finish a long book. This one, which has taken me from Connecticut to California via Indiana and Chicago, through some of the most tumultuous years of my life, feels four times as strange.
In my copy, this fourth volume takes us from the breakup of the Muslim world from the united Umayyad Caliphate to the final conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Along the way are Genghis Khan; the Crusades; the Normans; Timur the Great; and endless schisms, theological controversies, popes and antipopes of the Catholic church, particularly the great divide between the Latin West and Greek East. The stories and topics are variously interesting; Gibbon's writing is always sublime. (You can see how it affects my own.)
Since here in the Goodreads page for some obscure edition of a fourth volume I am unlikely to be noticed or read, I'll take a moment to talk about something that came more and more to my attention throughout the years I read the book: Gibbon's reputation, and the reputation of the Decline and Fall itself, the way it looms in the minds of people who haven't read it, at least not the whole thing. The first problem is that it is a masterpiece: an unassailable, massive, celebrated, loooooong masterpiece. This has several effects, mostly bad. Amateurs and autodidacts like myself have many vices, and one of them is The Quest For the One True Source. They want to Get It and move on to the next thing, not engage in a neverending conversation, with an endless procession of writers arguing, and (if you feel optimistic) each flawed voice contributing towards a more (but never entirely) perfect whole somewhere in the collective consciousness of the scholarly community, or something. That kind of inconclusiveness, that lack of closure, is not appealing to the autodidact. He or she (in my experience, usually he) is basically searching for scripture, and so has inordinate regard for the famous, the long, the definitive, and the old. Gibbon hits all these marks exactly. And so you get a lot of amateur historians feeling, well, if I read Gibbon, I'll know everything about the late Roman Empire; next I shall read Macaulay, and know everything about the history of England... I say "if" advisedly; of course most people don't actually read the whole book, any more than they read all of Scripture. (The people who read the whole Bible are a different bunch altogether; a discussion for another time.) They read abridgments, if anything, and in my own personal opinion, the selections of the adbridgers tend to be oriented towards what people expect from Gibbon--in other words, by now, the reputation of the book creates the text, rather than the text creating the reputation. It's like Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In a Room": the parts that resonate are amplified until the actual content and meaning disappears. As most people who are interested in history are not trained historians, there's a lot of people with a scriptural view of Gibbon; scientists and engineers are notoriously amateurish when it comes to the humanities, and so with these reputation-created abridgments, or even more likely, with the exaggerated paraphrases of Asimov or Sagan, Gibbon lives in the minds of many as a foundational anti-theist text, infalliable, because scripture.
Against this silliness the actual historians, deep within that conversation, are understandably annoyed and dismissive. History students, in particular, whether undergrad or working on their PhDs, like to pop up when Gibbon is knowingly or unknowingly cited, to correct our foolish errors. Gibbon, they point out, did his historianing from the library, and had no access to archeology; he had no interest in the quotidian facts of daily life in the periods he discussed; he asserted as fact what the earliest sources told him, even when records were scanty and he had only poor materials to work with, and his criteria for chosing between sources were often idiosyncratic; he wrote with a strong anti-clerical, and particularly anti-Catholic, bias; and so on. All true enough. But college students also do not have the time or inclination to read 2500 pages of 18th Century history, especially since their professors have warned them against this scriptural danger; and from what I can tell, those professors themselves don't seem to have read him either, perhaps the result of having been warned by their own mentors, and so on. So their "corrections" and criticisms are often preposterous; I have been told that Gibbon uncritically believed in the story of Romulus and Remus, for one memorably bananas example. (I saw one confrontation, in a comment thread somewhere, between a scripture-seeking autodidact, and a professor-parroting history undergrad; "I've heard the prose is incredible," says the autodidact, in surly response to a mixture of solid and fabulous criticism of Gibbon. "The prose? It's pretty good," replies our undergrad, with the perfectly confident ignorance characteristic of 16-to-22-year old morons.) Again, Gibbon's reputation has written their text: they think Gibbon ignored the Byzantines, never wrote a word about economics or logistic facts, thought about religion and science like a euphoric 21st Century edgelord. The title works its mischief, and practically everyone thinks he represents over a thousand years of history as continual decline.
But the fact is that Gibbon was an artist and a genius. He was as full of negative capability as Shakespeare, as self-contradictory as Whitman. Nothing is truly simple in Gibbon, despite his clarity of prose. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, he has a mystifying reputation for monotonous didacticism when in fact he is maddeningly ambiguous and impossible to pin down. I'm not going to go through various examples, but one thing that jumped out at me was his magnificent summing up of the Crusades, some of the very best writing in the entire book. As he had mentioned not long before that the French monarchy was the oldest still existing in Europe, and later would mention the war in America, I was exquisitely aware of the fact that the French Revolution was almost upon him. And we know he agreed with Burke on the question, when it did come. Yet what did he write, at that exact pre-Revolutionary moment?
It seems almost a manifesto; I can see Robespierre brandishing this passage, insisting that the guillotine must play the part of the Crusades, and clear that forest for the Third Estate.
Very rarely, I have admitted to people that I've been reading this book. Somehow it seems like it will come across as a stunt read, fodder for a (rather old-fashioned, now) clickbait series in Salon. Or like I'm one of those scripture-hunting autodidacts, or worst of all that I'm simply incredibly square. When I do mention it, people sometimes ask what I'm learning, and especially (this is common with older hippie-flavored liberals) what parallels I am finding to the current state of the American empire, with a barely-perceptible note of hope that I will tell them that our hegemony is certainly declining and falling. This is really again the fault of the title; over the course of a thousand years plus, there are parallels to anything and everything, and yet very little that is anything like America now. One thing I have "learned", perhaps less agreeable to current liberal sensibilites, is the enormous flux and change of history, where nothing is permanent. I don't know if there really are any "indigenous" people anywhere; nations have wandered, arisen, disappeared. What we call Turkey was solidly Greek for over a millenium, the Turks are comparatively late arrivals. On the Gibbonian scale, America's 200 years are hardly anything; like the Mongol empire, it might flourish incredibly fast and then disappear, or it may last as long as the Roman Empire did. Along with this endless churning, the persistence of that empire is another thing I "learned"; it's hard to believe that when Donatello and Brunelleschi were digging up Roman artifacts in Italy, the same empire whose ancient ruins they explored still existed, as at least some kind of political continuity, in Constantinople. Despite the title, while reading Gibbon we feel that Rome never actually fell, and rather than declining, rather went through a long--a still, in the third millenium, unfinished--metamorphosis. Perhaps that's why his last chapter is devoted to explaining why the ruins were ruins; if you've read Gibbon, really read him, the "hole" of the Dark Ages doesn't exist, and it does come to seem strange that these buildings should crumble.
But really, of course, I didn't read to learn. I always remember and love Virginia Woolf's distinction between scholars and readers; and like her I prefer the "humane passion for pure and disinterested reading." I read Gibbon to read him, because he has written something worth reading. It is neither scripture, nor science; if you want to know The Truth you must look elsewhere. His book has transcended its origin, and is, as the undergrads insist, no longer history. It is art, and meant for better things than Truth.
In my copy, this fourth volume takes us from the breakup of the Muslim world from the united Umayyad Caliphate to the final conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Along the way are Genghis Khan; the Crusades; the Normans; Timur the Great; and endless schisms, theological controversies, popes and antipopes of the Catholic church, particularly the great divide between the Latin West and Greek East. The stories and topics are variously interesting; Gibbon's writing is always sublime. (You can see how it affects my own.)
Since here in the Goodreads page for some obscure edition of a fourth volume I am unlikely to be noticed or read, I'll take a moment to talk about something that came more and more to my attention throughout the years I read the book: Gibbon's reputation, and the reputation of the Decline and Fall itself, the way it looms in the minds of people who haven't read it, at least not the whole thing. The first problem is that it is a masterpiece: an unassailable, massive, celebrated, loooooong masterpiece. This has several effects, mostly bad. Amateurs and autodidacts like myself have many vices, and one of them is The Quest For the One True Source. They want to Get It and move on to the next thing, not engage in a neverending conversation, with an endless procession of writers arguing, and (if you feel optimistic) each flawed voice contributing towards a more (but never entirely) perfect whole somewhere in the collective consciousness of the scholarly community, or something. That kind of inconclusiveness, that lack of closure, is not appealing to the autodidact. He or she (in my experience, usually he) is basically searching for scripture, and so has inordinate regard for the famous, the long, the definitive, and the old. Gibbon hits all these marks exactly. And so you get a lot of amateur historians feeling, well, if I read Gibbon, I'll know everything about the late Roman Empire; next I shall read Macaulay, and know everything about the history of England... I say "if" advisedly; of course most people don't actually read the whole book, any more than they read all of Scripture. (The people who read the whole Bible are a different bunch altogether; a discussion for another time.) They read abridgments, if anything, and in my own personal opinion, the selections of the adbridgers tend to be oriented towards what people expect from Gibbon--in other words, by now, the reputation of the book creates the text, rather than the text creating the reputation. It's like Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In a Room": the parts that resonate are amplified until the actual content and meaning disappears. As most people who are interested in history are not trained historians, there's a lot of people with a scriptural view of Gibbon; scientists and engineers are notoriously amateurish when it comes to the humanities, and so with these reputation-created abridgments, or even more likely, with the exaggerated paraphrases of Asimov or Sagan, Gibbon lives in the minds of many as a foundational anti-theist text, infalliable, because scripture.
Against this silliness the actual historians, deep within that conversation, are understandably annoyed and dismissive. History students, in particular, whether undergrad or working on their PhDs, like to pop up when Gibbon is knowingly or unknowingly cited, to correct our foolish errors. Gibbon, they point out, did his historianing from the library, and had no access to archeology; he had no interest in the quotidian facts of daily life in the periods he discussed; he asserted as fact what the earliest sources told him, even when records were scanty and he had only poor materials to work with, and his criteria for chosing between sources were often idiosyncratic; he wrote with a strong anti-clerical, and particularly anti-Catholic, bias; and so on. All true enough. But college students also do not have the time or inclination to read 2500 pages of 18th Century history, especially since their professors have warned them against this scriptural danger; and from what I can tell, those professors themselves don't seem to have read him either, perhaps the result of having been warned by their own mentors, and so on. So their "corrections" and criticisms are often preposterous; I have been told that Gibbon uncritically believed in the story of Romulus and Remus, for one memorably bananas example. (I saw one confrontation, in a comment thread somewhere, between a scripture-seeking autodidact, and a professor-parroting history undergrad; "I've heard the prose is incredible," says the autodidact, in surly response to a mixture of solid and fabulous criticism of Gibbon. "The prose? It's pretty good," replies our undergrad, with the perfectly confident ignorance characteristic of 16-to-22-year old morons.) Again, Gibbon's reputation has written their text: they think Gibbon ignored the Byzantines, never wrote a word about economics or logistic facts, thought about religion and science like a euphoric 21st Century edgelord. The title works its mischief, and practically everyone thinks he represents over a thousand years of history as continual decline.
But the fact is that Gibbon was an artist and a genius. He was as full of negative capability as Shakespeare, as self-contradictory as Whitman. Nothing is truly simple in Gibbon, despite his clarity of prose. Like Nathaniel Hawthorne, he has a mystifying reputation for monotonous didacticism when in fact he is maddeningly ambiguous and impossible to pin down. I'm not going to go through various examples, but one thing that jumped out at me was his magnificent summing up of the Crusades, some of the very best writing in the entire book. As he had mentioned not long before that the French monarchy was the oldest still existing in Europe, and later would mention the war in America, I was exquisitely aware of the fact that the French Revolution was almost upon him. And we know he agreed with Burke on the question, when it did come. Yet what did he write, at that exact pre-Revolutionary moment?
In one respect I can indeed perceive the accidental operation of the crusades, not so much in producing a benefit as in removing an evil. The larger portion of the inhabitants of Europe was chained to the soil, without freedom, or property, or knowledge; and the two orders of ecclesiastics and nobles, whose numbers were comparatively small, alone deserved the name of citizens and men. This oppressive system was supported by the arts of the clergy and the swords of the barons. The authority of the priests operated in the darker ages as a salutary antidote: they prevented the total extinction of letters, mitigated the fierceness of the times, sheltered the poor and defenceless, and preserved or revived the peace and order of civil society. But the independence, rapine, and discord of the feudal lords were unmixed with any semblance of good; and every hope of industry and improvement was crushed by the iron weight of the martial aristocracy. Among the causes that undermined that Gothic edifice, a conspicuous place must be allowed to the crusades. The estates of the barons were dissipated, and their race was often extinguished, in these costly and perilous expeditions. Their poverty extorted from their pride those charters of freedom which unlocked the fetters of the slave, secured the farm of the peasant and the shop of the artificer, and gradually restored a substance and a soul to the most numerous and useful part of the community. The conflagration which destroyed the tall and barren trees of the forest gave air and scope to the vegetation of the smaller and nutritive plants of the soil.
It seems almost a manifesto; I can see Robespierre brandishing this passage, insisting that the guillotine must play the part of the Crusades, and clear that forest for the Third Estate.
Very rarely, I have admitted to people that I've been reading this book. Somehow it seems like it will come across as a stunt read, fodder for a (rather old-fashioned, now) clickbait series in Salon. Or like I'm one of those scripture-hunting autodidacts, or worst of all that I'm simply incredibly square. When I do mention it, people sometimes ask what I'm learning, and especially (this is common with older hippie-flavored liberals) what parallels I am finding to the current state of the American empire, with a barely-perceptible note of hope that I will tell them that our hegemony is certainly declining and falling. This is really again the fault of the title; over the course of a thousand years plus, there are parallels to anything and everything, and yet very little that is anything like America now. One thing I have "learned", perhaps less agreeable to current liberal sensibilites, is the enormous flux and change of history, where nothing is permanent. I don't know if there really are any "indigenous" people anywhere; nations have wandered, arisen, disappeared. What we call Turkey was solidly Greek for over a millenium, the Turks are comparatively late arrivals. On the Gibbonian scale, America's 200 years are hardly anything; like the Mongol empire, it might flourish incredibly fast and then disappear, or it may last as long as the Roman Empire did. Along with this endless churning, the persistence of that empire is another thing I "learned"; it's hard to believe that when Donatello and Brunelleschi were digging up Roman artifacts in Italy, the same empire whose ancient ruins they explored still existed, as at least some kind of political continuity, in Constantinople. Despite the title, while reading Gibbon we feel that Rome never actually fell, and rather than declining, rather went through a long--a still, in the third millenium, unfinished--metamorphosis. Perhaps that's why his last chapter is devoted to explaining why the ruins were ruins; if you've read Gibbon, really read him, the "hole" of the Dark Ages doesn't exist, and it does come to seem strange that these buildings should crumble.
But really, of course, I didn't read to learn. I always remember and love Virginia Woolf's distinction between scholars and readers; and like her I prefer the "humane passion for pure and disinterested reading." I read Gibbon to read him, because he has written something worth reading. It is neither scripture, nor science; if you want to know The Truth you must look elsewhere. His book has transcended its origin, and is, as the undergrads insist, no longer history. It is art, and meant for better things than Truth.
March 7, 2017
My bucket list reading journey through 15 centuries of Roman history is well along now; 2/3 completed, to be precise. With this brief review I conclude Volume 4, with 2 more Volumes to follow. This project began last September 22nd and one of the many things I’ve learned is just how much small increments of time, spent in the car, or walking my dog, can add up and be put to good use (plus it makes my dog really smart!). Those are the two segments of my day when I listen to Gibbon, and I actually believe taking it in small doses has been helpful. I can follow up later in the day on words, or places, or names, or events for which I might want a bit more background. Also, David Timson’s work as the narrator never gets old.
Some highlights and observations from Volume 4:
1. The timeline covered, measured by the chronology of emperors, is about 474 – 641 AD.. These would be the Eastern Empire leaders from Zeno to Heraclius. Gibbon often includes digressions and diversions along the way, to enrich his account beyond just the succession of emperors. Volume 4, for instance, begins with a discussion of the spread of monasticism through the Roman Empire, and the occasional fanatics that it produced.
2. At this point in history, the Western Empire has dissolved. Gibbon continues here to track the movements, campaigns, and invasions of many diverse groups: Burgundians, Merovingians, Visigoths, Saxons, and the Alemanni. He attributes the eventual fall of the Empire to the continued attacks from Barbarian invaders, and the waning ability or discipline of the Romans to defend their borders. Oh and, yes, he also blames the influence of Christianity, one of Gibbon’s most controversial viewpoints.
3. A quite significant portion of this Volume is devoted to the 38 year reign of the emperor Justinian. Some very interesting material here includes: his notable and cruel wife (and eventual empress, who began life as an actress) Theodora; the Roman games and the various political factions of the circus; the growth of the Silk trade; the architecture of the famous church of St. Sophia in Constantinople; and an entire, lengthy chapter (another digression) on Roman jurisprudence and the Codes and Pandects of Justinian.
4. Some other brief highlights: the brilliant military career of Belisarius – the Persian ruler Nushirvan, and the beginnings of a long history of conflicts with the Persians – up to the triumph of Heraclius over them.
Gibbon’s prose is as brilliant, and his opinions as blunt, as ever. Still enjoying the journey greatly!!
Some highlights and observations from Volume 4:
1. The timeline covered, measured by the chronology of emperors, is about 474 – 641 AD.. These would be the Eastern Empire leaders from Zeno to Heraclius. Gibbon often includes digressions and diversions along the way, to enrich his account beyond just the succession of emperors. Volume 4, for instance, begins with a discussion of the spread of monasticism through the Roman Empire, and the occasional fanatics that it produced.
2. At this point in history, the Western Empire has dissolved. Gibbon continues here to track the movements, campaigns, and invasions of many diverse groups: Burgundians, Merovingians, Visigoths, Saxons, and the Alemanni. He attributes the eventual fall of the Empire to the continued attacks from Barbarian invaders, and the waning ability or discipline of the Romans to defend their borders. Oh and, yes, he also blames the influence of Christianity, one of Gibbon’s most controversial viewpoints.
3. A quite significant portion of this Volume is devoted to the 38 year reign of the emperor Justinian. Some very interesting material here includes: his notable and cruel wife (and eventual empress, who began life as an actress) Theodora; the Roman games and the various political factions of the circus; the growth of the Silk trade; the architecture of the famous church of St. Sophia in Constantinople; and an entire, lengthy chapter (another digression) on Roman jurisprudence and the Codes and Pandects of Justinian.
4. Some other brief highlights: the brilliant military career of Belisarius – the Persian ruler Nushirvan, and the beginnings of a long history of conflicts with the Persians – up to the triumph of Heraclius over them.
Gibbon’s prose is as brilliant, and his opinions as blunt, as ever. Still enjoying the journey greatly!!
July 22, 2024
Nihayet dördüncü cildin sonu. On sekizinci yüzyılda yazıldığını ihmal etmeden söylenmeli ki; Gibbon büyük bir alîm.
Octavianus'dan Constantinus Palailogos'a, bu bin beş yüz yıllık macerada sanırım en ilham verici unsur; tarihin cesurdan yana olduğunun sağlamasını kavramak oldu.
Octavianus'dan Constantinus Palailogos'a, bu bin beş yüz yıllık macerada sanırım en ilham verici unsur; tarihin cesurdan yana olduğunun sağlamasını kavramak oldu.
October 1, 2012
Continuing the story after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, Gibbon takes the opportunity to take the reader through the aftermath of fall of the western empire in Italy and the other regions of the western empire. Using the same powerfully descriptive style, Gibbon is able to give the reader a detailed, although not overwhelming, breakdown of the “barbarian” tribes that take over Italy, Gaul and Spain. This brief overview helped to dissuade some of the erroneous perceptions that some readers, like myself, might have regarding these tribes.
These prejudices can almost certainly be accounted to the overhyped narrative that society disintegrated with the fall of Rome; however, Gibbon is able to patiently demonstrate that these tribes were not completely void of culture or merit. Although the lack of a powerful and centralized regime left by the void of the Romans did increase the rate of military action in regions previously more peaceful, Gibbon is able to show that in the regions securely dominated by these new tribes, the quality of life of its residents actually improved. The change from an oppressive and declining empire, with its increasingly large tax burdens, to a less expensive and better managed form of rule was largely welcomed.
Similarly, Gibbon is able to take another detour through the quagmire of theological disputes in the early Catholic Church. Although this narrative is usually omitted in other abridged versions, the editors specifically state in their introduction that they chose to leave these theological discussions in this version because the current global climate has highlighted the impact that religious fanaticism can have in the world. Thus, I found it fascinating that as far back as the 18th century Gibbon is reminding his largely Christian audience that the early history of the church was largely involved in disputes over the most minute etymological differences that resulted in persecutions and deaths throughout the empire.
These prejudices can almost certainly be accounted to the overhyped narrative that society disintegrated with the fall of Rome; however, Gibbon is able to patiently demonstrate that these tribes were not completely void of culture or merit. Although the lack of a powerful and centralized regime left by the void of the Romans did increase the rate of military action in regions previously more peaceful, Gibbon is able to show that in the regions securely dominated by these new tribes, the quality of life of its residents actually improved. The change from an oppressive and declining empire, with its increasingly large tax burdens, to a less expensive and better managed form of rule was largely welcomed.
Similarly, Gibbon is able to take another detour through the quagmire of theological disputes in the early Catholic Church. Although this narrative is usually omitted in other abridged versions, the editors specifically state in their introduction that they chose to leave these theological discussions in this version because the current global climate has highlighted the impact that religious fanaticism can have in the world. Thus, I found it fascinating that as far back as the 18th century Gibbon is reminding his largely Christian audience that the early history of the church was largely involved in disputes over the most minute etymological differences that resulted in persecutions and deaths throughout the empire.
February 27, 2014
Julian the apostate, division of the empire, Persians, Huns and Goths. It's not going well.
There's a lot I like. For example the wit. There's a description of one of Julian's military campaigns into Germany which ends with "After he had given peace to the Barbarians,.." And my favourite: a temple had been burnt down after some protests by Christians (Galilaeans) who claimed divine intercession "Julian was reduced to the alternative of believing either a crime or a miracle, he chose, without hesitation, without evidence, but with some colour of probability, to impute the fire of Daphne to the revenge of the Galilæans."
There's a lot I like. For example the wit. There's a description of one of Julian's military campaigns into Germany which ends with "After he had given peace to the Barbarians,.." And my favourite: a temple had been burnt down after some protests by Christians (Galilaeans) who claimed divine intercession "Julian was reduced to the alternative of believing either a crime or a miracle, he chose, without hesitation, without evidence, but with some colour of probability, to impute the fire of Daphne to the revenge of the Galilæans."
April 23, 2015
Like the author, we lose ourselves in the romance of the wars of Belisarius.
July 29, 2019
Four done, two to go! I especially enjoyed the discussion of early Christianity and the other 'cults' at the time. This book is a challenge to listen to in audio form keeping up with both names (there were 12 Constantines!) as well as the language used. Gibbon's may be the only author to use "pious ejaculation" in a sentence and have it actually sound clean. I spent a lot of time hitting up dictionary.com during this read.
August 31, 2020
This book was 90% me struggling to stay awake, 10% feeling faintly offended at an 18th century historian's 18th century prejudices.
April 14, 2023
This volume includes chapters 37 to 46, which begins with Zeno’s reign in Constantinople and Clovis’ rise as the dictator of the Franks and ends with the decisive victory of Heraclius over the Persians which left both the Roman and Persian empires desolate and vulnerable to the Islamic caliphate which had just originated contemporaneously. The time period of this volume is from 476 to 628 CE. Gibbon had originally intended to complete the work in three volumes till 476 CE, with the fall of the Western empire. Later he decided to carry it over to the fall of the Eastern empire in 1453. As such, this volume incorporates an introduction by Hugh Trevor-Roper which is much shorter than the one he wrote for the first volume. Trevor-Roper emphasizes Gibbon’s lack of enthusiasm for the Byzantine empire.
In Volume 3, Gibbon had described the downward spiral of the empire without going into the mechanics of it. He is much more forthright in this volume and the decay of Rome is ascribed to immoderate greatness. He suggests that instead of enquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should be surprised that it had subsisted for so long. The seeds of degeneration were germinated in the military ranks. The victorious legions acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries which led them to oppress the freedom of the republic and afterwards to violate the majesty of the rulers. The emperors were reduced to corrupting the military discipline and its fighting spirit sagged. We read about sovereigns trembling at the rebellion of soldiers and utilizing the kingdom’s scarce resources to vainly placate the misbehaving troops. Seldom did the military commanders preside over citizen troops. When barbarians attacked, the citizens and their ruler cowered and sought asylum behind the city’s walls leading to a siege that caused immense pain as it got elongated. When famine conditions become unbearable, they submit to the humiliating terms of the conquerors and a ruthless pillage follows. All wealth that can be found would be taken away and the ablest and fairest inhabitants of both sexes would be forced into slavery. We read about several such episodes.
Gibbon alleges that Christianity also had some influence on the decline and fall. It had reached the pinnacle of unquestioned spiritual glory by this time as the one and only faith of the empire. The clergy preached the doctrine of patience and pusillanimity. The last remains of military spirit were buried in monasteries. Monastic life in general and in Egypt and Syria in particular demanded the most severe penances. Sometimes they even abandoned costumes. These destroyed the sensibility of the mind and body. These fanatics were unable of any lively affection for mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper distinguished the monks of every age and country. Their indifference was inflamed by religious hatred. A large portion of the public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion. Theological discord led to the birth of sects whose internecine conflicts were sometimes bloody and implacable. The attention of the emperors was diverted from military camps to religious synods. The persecuted sects became the secret enemy of their country. All these factors took its toll in varying proportions on the empire’s downfall.
A central figure in this stage of Roman history is Emperor Justinian and he is given due recognition in the book. He ruled for 38 years and conveyed a façade of stability to the regime though on a personal level his talents were only mediocre at its best. His name is eclipsed by that of his victorious generals such as Belisarius and Narses who subjugated the rebellious provinces like Africa and Italy. Gibbon comments on his florid style that Justinian was neither beloved in his life nor regretted in his death. Rather than directing the empire’s legions against the enemy, he played one barbarian group against the other – Goths against Vandals, Avars against Lombards. Religious bigotry forced him to close down the philosophic schools of Athens as a permanent rupture with paganism and Greek culture. This act is conventionally taken as the beginning of Dark Ages. As he officially ended the long line of Greek philosophers that extended a millennium before, seven of them escaped to the Persian court of Chosroes. But they were soon disenchanted with the despotism and venality of the Persian court and wanted to come back to Greece. Chosroes mediated a pardon for the seven sages that they should be exempted from the penal laws enacted against pagan subjects. Justinian’s reign also witnessed some traces of the intermingling of social classes. The emperor was probably the first monarch to marry an actress! His wife Theodora was a celebrity at the theatre. She was a bold woman who performed nude scenes on stage. Justinian scrapped the rule prohibiting marriage of patricians with people of low birth and accepted her as an equal and independent colleague on the throne. We read about her stratagems to concentrate power in her hands and to destroy her enemies, sometimes physically.
This volume includes a survey of Roman jurisprudence and law codes that existed at the time of Justinian. Some curious aspects of the Roman law are elucidated by Gibbon and we see in them the height of patriarchy at its invasive best. The father was perpetually dominant over his offspring. An adult son can enjoy the privileges of a citizen in public, but at home he was the personal property of his father. He could even be sold as a slave and only with the third sale would he be relieved of his filial obligations. The patriarch possessed the power of life and death over his children. When Justinian ascended the throne, the reform of Roman jurisprudence was long overdue. In the space of ten centuries, the infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled many thousand volumes, which no one could procure or study in any detail. Justinian appointed seventeen lawyers with Tribonian at their head to exercise an absolute jurisdiction over the works of their predecessors and to come up with an updated code of law. The modern Common Law is based on Justinian’s code.
Volume 4 ends at a potent stage in which profound changes are in the air. The Romans and Persians, the two most powerful empires in the world at that time, are locked in a mortal combat which would thoroughly exhaust the former and would prove fatal for the latter. Heraclius was on the Roman throne. He was attacked from the European side by Avars on Persian behest and from the Asian side by Persians under Chosroes II. The Persian emperor had a dream run in the beginning like his ancestor Darius did more than a millennium ago and this time they conquered Egypt and Carthage. Roman empire was reduced to the walls of Constantinople and the remnants of Greece, Italy and Africa. Christians were persecuted by the Zoroastrians. Heraclius made an unbelievable comeback and chased Chosroes to the gates of his own palace at Ctesiphon. In 627, at the nadir of defeat, Chosroes was usurped by his son, but he could not safely keep the throne which was ascended by nine kings in four years. It was this emaciated Persian Empire that fell victim to the Islamic thrust from Arabia, leading one to wonder how history would have run differently had the two great empires were on more friendly terms. We read about Prophet Mohammed’s epistle to Chosroes exhorting him to embrace Islam and the emperor tearing away the letter in disgust.
The scholar in Gibbon laments that the commerce between Rome and China brought silk instead of printing which was already in existence there. Great works of Rome could have been preserved in that way. Writing in parchment ran the tedious task of re-copying every few centuries and thus making the text vulnerable to errors or modifications by the copyists. It is amusing to note occasional eruptions of colonial pride or even blatant racism in Gibbon’s text which was not at all offensive to the public sentiment in his time. Regarding the people of Colchis he says, “The curled hair and swarthy complexion of Africa no longer disfigure the most perfect of the human race” (p.350). On another occasion he is more blunt: “The hand of nature has flattened the noses of the Negroes, covered their heads with shaggy wool and tinged their skin with inherent and indelible blackness” (p.362).
The book is highly recommended.
In Volume 3, Gibbon had described the downward spiral of the empire without going into the mechanics of it. He is much more forthright in this volume and the decay of Rome is ascribed to immoderate greatness. He suggests that instead of enquiring why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should be surprised that it had subsisted for so long. The seeds of degeneration were germinated in the military ranks. The victorious legions acquired the vices of strangers and mercenaries which led them to oppress the freedom of the republic and afterwards to violate the majesty of the rulers. The emperors were reduced to corrupting the military discipline and its fighting spirit sagged. We read about sovereigns trembling at the rebellion of soldiers and utilizing the kingdom’s scarce resources to vainly placate the misbehaving troops. Seldom did the military commanders preside over citizen troops. When barbarians attacked, the citizens and their ruler cowered and sought asylum behind the city’s walls leading to a siege that caused immense pain as it got elongated. When famine conditions become unbearable, they submit to the humiliating terms of the conquerors and a ruthless pillage follows. All wealth that can be found would be taken away and the ablest and fairest inhabitants of both sexes would be forced into slavery. We read about several such episodes.
Gibbon alleges that Christianity also had some influence on the decline and fall. It had reached the pinnacle of unquestioned spiritual glory by this time as the one and only faith of the empire. The clergy preached the doctrine of patience and pusillanimity. The last remains of military spirit were buried in monasteries. Monastic life in general and in Egypt and Syria in particular demanded the most severe penances. Sometimes they even abandoned costumes. These destroyed the sensibility of the mind and body. These fanatics were unable of any lively affection for mankind. A cruel, unfeeling temper distinguished the monks of every age and country. Their indifference was inflamed by religious hatred. A large portion of the public and private wealth was consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion. Theological discord led to the birth of sects whose internecine conflicts were sometimes bloody and implacable. The attention of the emperors was diverted from military camps to religious synods. The persecuted sects became the secret enemy of their country. All these factors took its toll in varying proportions on the empire’s downfall.
A central figure in this stage of Roman history is Emperor Justinian and he is given due recognition in the book. He ruled for 38 years and conveyed a façade of stability to the regime though on a personal level his talents were only mediocre at its best. His name is eclipsed by that of his victorious generals such as Belisarius and Narses who subjugated the rebellious provinces like Africa and Italy. Gibbon comments on his florid style that Justinian was neither beloved in his life nor regretted in his death. Rather than directing the empire’s legions against the enemy, he played one barbarian group against the other – Goths against Vandals, Avars against Lombards. Religious bigotry forced him to close down the philosophic schools of Athens as a permanent rupture with paganism and Greek culture. This act is conventionally taken as the beginning of Dark Ages. As he officially ended the long line of Greek philosophers that extended a millennium before, seven of them escaped to the Persian court of Chosroes. But they were soon disenchanted with the despotism and venality of the Persian court and wanted to come back to Greece. Chosroes mediated a pardon for the seven sages that they should be exempted from the penal laws enacted against pagan subjects. Justinian’s reign also witnessed some traces of the intermingling of social classes. The emperor was probably the first monarch to marry an actress! His wife Theodora was a celebrity at the theatre. She was a bold woman who performed nude scenes on stage. Justinian scrapped the rule prohibiting marriage of patricians with people of low birth and accepted her as an equal and independent colleague on the throne. We read about her stratagems to concentrate power in her hands and to destroy her enemies, sometimes physically.
This volume includes a survey of Roman jurisprudence and law codes that existed at the time of Justinian. Some curious aspects of the Roman law are elucidated by Gibbon and we see in them the height of patriarchy at its invasive best. The father was perpetually dominant over his offspring. An adult son can enjoy the privileges of a citizen in public, but at home he was the personal property of his father. He could even be sold as a slave and only with the third sale would he be relieved of his filial obligations. The patriarch possessed the power of life and death over his children. When Justinian ascended the throne, the reform of Roman jurisprudence was long overdue. In the space of ten centuries, the infinite variety of laws and legal opinions had filled many thousand volumes, which no one could procure or study in any detail. Justinian appointed seventeen lawyers with Tribonian at their head to exercise an absolute jurisdiction over the works of their predecessors and to come up with an updated code of law. The modern Common Law is based on Justinian’s code.
Volume 4 ends at a potent stage in which profound changes are in the air. The Romans and Persians, the two most powerful empires in the world at that time, are locked in a mortal combat which would thoroughly exhaust the former and would prove fatal for the latter. Heraclius was on the Roman throne. He was attacked from the European side by Avars on Persian behest and from the Asian side by Persians under Chosroes II. The Persian emperor had a dream run in the beginning like his ancestor Darius did more than a millennium ago and this time they conquered Egypt and Carthage. Roman empire was reduced to the walls of Constantinople and the remnants of Greece, Italy and Africa. Christians were persecuted by the Zoroastrians. Heraclius made an unbelievable comeback and chased Chosroes to the gates of his own palace at Ctesiphon. In 627, at the nadir of defeat, Chosroes was usurped by his son, but he could not safely keep the throne which was ascended by nine kings in four years. It was this emaciated Persian Empire that fell victim to the Islamic thrust from Arabia, leading one to wonder how history would have run differently had the two great empires were on more friendly terms. We read about Prophet Mohammed’s epistle to Chosroes exhorting him to embrace Islam and the emperor tearing away the letter in disgust.
The scholar in Gibbon laments that the commerce between Rome and China brought silk instead of printing which was already in existence there. Great works of Rome could have been preserved in that way. Writing in parchment ran the tedious task of re-copying every few centuries and thus making the text vulnerable to errors or modifications by the copyists. It is amusing to note occasional eruptions of colonial pride or even blatant racism in Gibbon’s text which was not at all offensive to the public sentiment in his time. Regarding the people of Colchis he says, “The curled hair and swarthy complexion of Africa no longer disfigure the most perfect of the human race” (p.350). On another occasion he is more blunt: “The hand of nature has flattened the noses of the Negroes, covered their heads with shaggy wool and tinged their skin with inherent and indelible blackness” (p.362).
The book is highly recommended.
April 10, 2019
William Butler Yeats wrote a fine poem “Sailing to Byzantium” in which he idealized the city somewhat and called it "Holy." I wonder if he read this fourth volume. He probably would have picked another city name to fantasize about if he did.
January 30, 2018
The Decline And Fall gives a convenient place for respite between volumes III & IV, with book III ending with the fall of the western empire. As much as I love dry history books, even I needed a little time away. Book IV helpfully opens with Gibbon's brief synopsis of the fall of the west before spending majority of its pages on the reign of Justinian.
About half of the book is given over to that emperor's fight to reclaim Egypt and Italy from Germanic tribes. The highlight of this episode, and the whole volume, is the almost Shakespearean arc of the career of Belisarius, Justinian's brilliant general and, eventually, the target of his jealousy. After the war to reclaim the west, the work moves on to the refinement of the Roman legal codes. This is one of the crowning achievements of Justinian's reign, and a lengthy description of it is obviously necessary. It does make for very slow reading, though, and Gibbon's at times convoluted writing style doesn't make it easier. The work closes with a description of relations between Byzantium and Persia at the end of Justinian's life and the beginning of his successor's reign.
As I've been reading these books, I've been wondering if they offer any insight regarding Gibbon's consciousness of his contemporary political world. Generally, he seems to reflect the humanism of his era, and his faith in democracy and citations of Locke, Montesquieu, and others betray an Enlightenment bias. But these volumes were published between 1776 and 1788, and Gibbon was and Englishman (though a very continental one); it's hard to read these books and not wonder if his commentary on the Roman Empire reflects feelings he might have had about momentous events happening in the British one of his time. If he were to give anything away in this regard, intentionally or unintentionally, the opening of Book IV affords the perfect opportunity.
Gibbon does seem to flirt with commenting on current events. His summary of the demise of the western empire ends with analysis rooted in comparisons between the institutional integrity of the Roman state with that of the British one. This exercise comes to a very optimistic conclusion for Gibbon's own era, despite English colonialism experiencing one of its first major set backs - America winning its independence.
Of course history affords no easy and clean comparisons between the past and the present. Those who don't learn history aren't really doomed to repeat it, but they are deprived of a set of tools and contexts with which to manage the very new challenges of their own era. There's very little similarity between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the dissolution of English colonial power and, at such an early stage (Britain still having about 200 years of colonial power to enjoy), Gibbon might not have seen anything portentous in the American Revolution.
But the coincidence of his subject and his era makes me wonder how he felt. The coincidence of my reading and my era make me wonder even more. No one can tell the future, but history makes it easier to see the importance of events that permanently alter the trajectory of one's own era.
May 15, 2022
This fourth volume of Edward Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Folio Society edition) begins with the accessions of Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East in 395 AD to the downfall of Romulus Augustulus in 476 AD.
I can’t think of any other moment in world history other than perhaps the final days of the Second World War that more personifies the fourth and last cycle of Wagner’s “The Ring”—Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) than the fall of the Roman Empire. It is a consummately poetic ending coming full circle. Wagner’s story begins and ends with the Rhinemaidens in possession of the Ring. Rome’s story begins and ends, in the span of 1,200 years, with the names of Romulus and Augustus.
It is perhaps too easy to lay the blame for the Roman Empire’s collapse on the barbarians alone. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Rome was well on its way to self-immolation long before the barbarians were ever a threat. From Gibbon on page 242:
The barbarians nevertheless did deliver the coup de grâce to an empire that had been flagellating itself for centuries. Romulus Augustulus, “a youth recommended only by his beauty,” was the last of the Western emperors. Odoacer, “a bold barbarian” and later King of Italy who overthrew Romulus in 476 AD, generously exiled the emperor and his family to Campania where he outlived his usurper.
That the barbarians were not as savage as their name would suggest surprised me the most. Alaric, King of the Visigoths, who had been the first of the barbarians to sack Rome some six decades before Odoacer, was himself a Christian. He had encouraged his troops to plunder Rome, but he’d also exhorted them to spare civilian lives and respect the churches. Moreover, the Gothic King allowed Christian fugitives, without distinction of age or rank, “to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican.” Such acts of clemency were, in fact, the inspiration for St Augustine’s seminal work, “City of God.”
The last two chapters following Rome’s collapse discuss the barbarians’ conversion to Christianity, the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul, the Saxon conquest of Britain, etc.
This is an objectively well-written history. I might have enjoyed it more, however, had I taken breaks between the volumes. For that reason, the final four volumes (about the Eastern Empire) will have to wait. Volume III still takes the cake for best illustrations.
I can’t think of any other moment in world history other than perhaps the final days of the Second World War that more personifies the fourth and last cycle of Wagner’s “The Ring”—Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) than the fall of the Roman Empire. It is a consummately poetic ending coming full circle. Wagner’s story begins and ends with the Rhinemaidens in possession of the Ring. Rome’s story begins and ends, in the span of 1,200 years, with the names of Romulus and Augustus.
It is perhaps too easy to lay the blame for the Roman Empire’s collapse on the barbarians alone. As I’ve noted elsewhere, Rome was well on its way to self-immolation long before the barbarians were ever a threat. From Gibbon on page 242:
“If all the barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honour.”
The barbarians nevertheless did deliver the coup de grâce to an empire that had been flagellating itself for centuries. Romulus Augustulus, “a youth recommended only by his beauty,” was the last of the Western emperors. Odoacer, “a bold barbarian” and later King of Italy who overthrew Romulus in 476 AD, generously exiled the emperor and his family to Campania where he outlived his usurper.
That the barbarians were not as savage as their name would suggest surprised me the most. Alaric, King of the Visigoths, who had been the first of the barbarians to sack Rome some six decades before Odoacer, was himself a Christian. He had encouraged his troops to plunder Rome, but he’d also exhorted them to spare civilian lives and respect the churches. Moreover, the Gothic King allowed Christian fugitives, without distinction of age or rank, “to escape to the secure and hospitable sanctuary of the Vatican.” Such acts of clemency were, in fact, the inspiration for St Augustine’s seminal work, “City of God.”
The last two chapters following Rome’s collapse discuss the barbarians’ conversion to Christianity, the establishment of the French monarchy in Gaul, the Saxon conquest of Britain, etc.
This is an objectively well-written history. I might have enjoyed it more, however, had I taken breaks between the volumes. For that reason, the final four volumes (about the Eastern Empire) will have to wait. Volume III still takes the cake for best illustrations.
December 4, 2024
Volume #4 comprises much of the depressing aspects of western Rome’s fall that many of us are familiar with. We see it getting sacked several times before succumbing to inevitability. Gibbon presciently compares the weak and lascivious natures of the later Roman people to an earlier time when an ancient Spartan city faced a seemingly overwhelming force but chose to have none of it.
Gibbon seems to juxtapose the softness and inherent inadequacy of rulers “born in the purple” to the likes of Attila the Hun, who shows up to desolate large swaths of Gaul during this period.
We live in soft times. As a proverbial warning goes, ”hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” - G. Michael Hopf
This volume very clearly illustrates the misery and danger associated with getting soft. Peace and prosperity are then not desired destinations, as it were, but a wake-up call .
”If thou art a god, thou wilt not hurt those who have never injured thee; if thou art a man, advance:—and thou wilt find men equal to thyself."
Gibbon seems to juxtapose the softness and inherent inadequacy of rulers “born in the purple” to the likes of Attila the Hun, who shows up to desolate large swaths of Gaul during this period.
”The monarch alone assumed the superior pride of still adhering to the simplicity of his Scythian ancestors. The dress of Attila, his arms, and the furniture of his horse, were plain, without ornament, and of a single color. The royal table was served in wooden cups and platters; flesh was his only food; and the conqueror of the North never tasted the luxury of bread”.
We live in soft times. As a proverbial warning goes, ”hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” - G. Michael Hopf
This volume very clearly illustrates the misery and danger associated with getting soft. Peace and prosperity are then not desired destinations, as it were, but a wake-up call .
August 4, 2025
Gibbons volume 4
It’s interesting towards the end of the book he indicates that although Constantinople, even in the last decades of the empire and the 1400s was richer than Athens that it’s golden age, the people of Athens were free and therefore willing to engage in debates and fill off goal quiring things of that nature so it’s interesting to draw the dynamic between the witches of the matter, and actually the freedom of the conditions that would lead to democratic and enlightenment discourse maybe not necessarily enlightenment in the context of like the 17th century and early 18th century enlightenment figures by more lines of what can lead to Growing in knowledge and Gibbons says that golden age Athens had the perfect condition for a 50 year period that wasn’t necessarily correlated to wealth, but it could be one factor is what he admits, but even constant opponents last year has had wealth. They didn’t have the other factors to the golden age, even though they had lots of books and things of that nature that are perhaps also another condition for things.
It makes me wonder. Does the modern world have the conditions to lead to another golden age? I mean, we have all these computers in universities leading to this beautiful set of thought and patterns.
Vandals and Homer?
In what language did the vandals read Homer? Did they translate it to German or were they reading it in Greek and Latin? They evidently called one of their ambassadors to Constantinople Achilles in the court of Justinian.
It’s interesting towards the end of the book he indicates that although Constantinople, even in the last decades of the empire and the 1400s was richer than Athens that it’s golden age, the people of Athens were free and therefore willing to engage in debates and fill off goal quiring things of that nature so it’s interesting to draw the dynamic between the witches of the matter, and actually the freedom of the conditions that would lead to democratic and enlightenment discourse maybe not necessarily enlightenment in the context of like the 17th century and early 18th century enlightenment figures by more lines of what can lead to Growing in knowledge and Gibbons says that golden age Athens had the perfect condition for a 50 year period that wasn’t necessarily correlated to wealth, but it could be one factor is what he admits, but even constant opponents last year has had wealth. They didn’t have the other factors to the golden age, even though they had lots of books and things of that nature that are perhaps also another condition for things.
It makes me wonder. Does the modern world have the conditions to lead to another golden age? I mean, we have all these computers in universities leading to this beautiful set of thought and patterns.
Vandals and Homer?
In what language did the vandals read Homer? Did they translate it to German or were they reading it in Greek and Latin? They evidently called one of their ambassadors to Constantinople Achilles in the court of Justinian.
November 5, 2020
Volume IV of VII in the series, let's goo. This volume starts with the death throes of the Western empire as Rome is sacked by the Vandals and quickly descends into the "dark ages". It then moves to the rise of monastic life, the rise of Clovis and the Franks, and the general barbaric chaos of the Western Empire post fall. Lot's of head bashing, pillage, and general destruction with periods of peace through force. It then hops over to the Byzantine Empire and describes the palace intrigues but general peace in that part of the empire at this time.
It gets pretty interesting with the reign of Justinian, of the Justinian Code fame. He lead the Byzantine empire at it's debatable peak with his general Belisarius who heroically reconquers Africa and Italy in a great series of campaigns. It concludes with a great chapter on the evolution of Roman Jurisprudence from it's the beginning of the Republic to the end of the emperial era.
This book certainly has sections where it's very dry and hard to get through. Other parts are epic and truly some of the finest works of the English language. I would recommend anyone interested in Roman History to try to work their way through the series! 3 more volumes...
It gets pretty interesting with the reign of Justinian, of the Justinian Code fame. He lead the Byzantine empire at it's debatable peak with his general Belisarius who heroically reconquers Africa and Italy in a great series of campaigns. It concludes with a great chapter on the evolution of Roman Jurisprudence from it's the beginning of the Republic to the end of the emperial era.
This book certainly has sections where it's very dry and hard to get through. Other parts are epic and truly some of the finest works of the English language. I would recommend anyone interested in Roman History to try to work their way through the series! 3 more volumes...
November 29, 2018
I love Gibbon. But even more than learning a history of Rome, I am fascinated by the history of previous biases, bigotry and arrogance. In his day, perhaps, he was progressive. How do we view that now? I am fascinated .
May 4, 2019
This review for volume 4 of the Everyman's Library edition.
After the fall of the western empire, I wasn't sure how compelling the following material would be. But now I know all about Belisarius! A few chapters were very slow, but on the whole Gibbon continues to educate and elucidate.
After the fall of the western empire, I wasn't sure how compelling the following material would be. But now I know all about Belisarius! A few chapters were very slow, but on the whole Gibbon continues to educate and elucidate.
April 19, 2019
Decent
But I don't know how I can get through 2 more volumes this just isn't my typical read I just felt it was one of those books that needs to be read
But I don't know how I can get through 2 more volumes this just isn't my typical read I just felt it was one of those books that needs to be read
Read
February 26, 2023Justinian's come and gone, Italy is lost, the Persians are weakened and the Muslims are here.
February 21, 2024
gilbert!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! nice!!!!!!!!!!!
February 9, 2025
A somewhat tumultuous period. Worth a read for the life and exploits of Belisarius and his emperor, Justinian.
May 12, 2025
What a journey through history
Whirlpool of events, stories and characters that take you from a bygone era to the roots of several european states.
Whirlpool of events, stories and characters that take you from a bygone era to the roots of several european states.
December 18, 2016
This was the toughest of the volumes so far, as a reader. Much of the book tracked the evolution of roman jurisprudence, which makes for slower reading. The volume contains fantastic prose, as expected, but I started and finished other books while reading this volume. I needed a few breaks.
"Suicides are enumerated by Virgil among the unfortunate, rather than the guilty; and the poetical fables of the infernal shades could not seriously influence the faith or practice of mankind. But the precepts of the gospel, or the church, have at length imposed a pious servitude on the minds of Christians, and condemn them to expect, without a murmur, the last stroke of disease or the executioner.”
“The expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the value of the prize, and the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty or prudence of the claimants.”
“Experience had shown him the efficacy of these solemn and pompous rites, to soothe the distress, to confirm the faith, to mitigate the fierceness, and to dispel the dark enthusiasm of the vulgar.
“A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.”
“Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds which he had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire: and justice might allow the excuse, if the desolation had been confined to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred, military license, and religious zeal, had not wasted with equal rage the habitations and the temples of the guiltless subject.”
"Suicides are enumerated by Virgil among the unfortunate, rather than the guilty; and the poetical fables of the infernal shades could not seriously influence the faith or practice of mankind. But the precepts of the gospel, or the church, have at length imposed a pious servitude on the minds of Christians, and condemn them to expect, without a murmur, the last stroke of disease or the executioner.”
“The expense of the pursuit sometimes exceeded the value of the prize, and the fairest rights were abandoned by the poverty or prudence of the claimants.”
“Experience had shown him the efficacy of these solemn and pompous rites, to soothe the distress, to confirm the faith, to mitigate the fierceness, and to dispel the dark enthusiasm of the vulgar.
“A reformer should be exempt from the suspicion of interest, and he must possess the confidence and esteem of those whom he proposes to reclaim.”
“Whatever could not be easily transported, they consumed with fire, that Chosroes might feel the anguish of those wounds which he had so often inflicted on the provinces of the empire: and justice might allow the excuse, if the desolation had been confined to the works of regal luxury, if national hatred, military license, and religious zeal, had not wasted with equal rage the habitations and the temples of the guiltless subject.”
November 6, 2011
So I just finished reading "The History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" (sans the footnotes... that would have been another two weeks of my life gone forever.) Firstly... no... I don't know why I read it -- I just did... deal with it! Boy... what a ride that was.
What I realized is not particularly revolutionary, just the substantiation of what I've always thought: No matter how anatomically, biologically, and physiologically we've evolved from the primordial ooze that was our progenitor, the human spirit -- its wants, desires, unquenchable self-serving thirsts, insatiable egocentric hungers, delusional needs for money, power, and the subjugation of others to ameliorate our own inadequacies and lack of humanity... its magnanimity, beneficence, creativity, beauty, ethereality, curiosity, amorosity, and quest for true meaning -- has surely not kept apace. It has remained static (for better or worse) through the millennia.
What I realized is not particularly revolutionary, just the substantiation of what I've always thought: No matter how anatomically, biologically, and physiologically we've evolved from the primordial ooze that was our progenitor, the human spirit -- its wants, desires, unquenchable self-serving thirsts, insatiable egocentric hungers, delusional needs for money, power, and the subjugation of others to ameliorate our own inadequacies and lack of humanity... its magnanimity, beneficence, creativity, beauty, ethereality, curiosity, amorosity, and quest for true meaning -- has surely not kept apace. It has remained static (for better or worse) through the millennia.
August 22, 2016
After describing in detail the last remnants of the Western Roman Empire, volume 4 (of 6) pivots to the East. However, before making that move, Gibbon does a wonderful job explaining the lay of the land towards the end of the 5th and beginning of the 6th century in Europe and Northern Africa and the competing factions of "barbarians," contained therein, now emboldened with the fall of Rome. A particularly interesting bit of commentary is found at the end of chapter 38 with his General Observations of the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and a deep analysis of the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Following this probing analysis we are lead to the political morass of the East and Constantinople. Several familiar names are discussed in great detail including the Emperor Justinian, his successful general Belisarius and the final successes of Heraclius before the impending invasion of the armies of Mohammed. Great reading and a beautiful edition from Everyman. Highly recommended
February 15, 2013
"But the subjects of the Byzantine empire, who assume and dishonor the names both of Greeks and Romans, present a dead uniformity of abject vices, which are neither softened by the weakness of humanity, nor animated by the vigor of memorable crimes." The highlight of this volume is the exploits of Belisarius in retaking much of the Roman world from the Goths and Vandals. Though what I find most intriguing so far in the work as a whole is how Christianity has been soaked in blood from its very beginnings through the wholesale slaughter of Christians by Christians. If it isn't the definition of the Trinity, it's the duality or non-duality of Jesus the man and God in which fellow Christians chop each other into little bits. Prince of Peace indeed.
August 15, 2020
Poor kingling only had bread and water. Gibbon is the Master of pith:
he fled before them above fifty miles as far as Stagyra in Macedonia; but the fugitive without an object or a follower, was arrested, brought back to Constantinople, deprived of his eyes, and confined in a lonesome tower, on a scant allowance of bread and water.
he fled before them above fifty miles as far as Stagyra in Macedonia; but the fugitive without an object or a follower, was arrested, brought back to Constantinople, deprived of his eyes, and confined in a lonesome tower, on a scant allowance of bread and water.
February 21, 2021
I admire the scope of the research and and the ability of the author in bringing to light a history hundreds of years before his time. I detested however the racist sentiments ("a metaphysical religion may appear too refined for the capacity of the negro race"), coming from a researcher who should have realised by then the folly of sweeping generalisations based on ethnic origin.
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