The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin Classics)

I have only read about 25% of this book since it is a very large one (over 1000 pages), but I can say The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon is one of the best history books I have ever read.
Thought English is not my native language, the book is, with a few exceptions, very easy to read. It is loaded with a lot of history since it covers over 1000 years, but this fact does not give you a headache if you are not into learning everything in it.
The book covers the history of the Roman Empire from the 1st century A.D. to the final collapse of it in the 11th century. What I like about Gibbon's writing style is that he follows every emperor's reign and (not going into very much details) explains the ups and (mainly) downs of this great empire.
That is why I wormly recommand this book to any history lover and specially to the ones interested in the reasons of the great fall of The Roman Empire.

Edit: I have read over 80% of time and I can say I am truly impressed. From all the theories of why the Roman Empire fell, Gibbon's ones are the most respected. Some argue he is a "paganist" writer since he thinks christianity is the main reason for the fall of the Roman Empire (maybe that's why I like the book so much... I totaly agree with his opinion). If you are interested in the fall of the Roman Empire this book is a must and should come first before any other book on this subject.

OK, I know this is a classic. But it's quality, as far as entertainment, is uneven. Some sections, early on, are compelling, entertaining and educational. But much of it drags on--far too much detail for the insight actually provided. If I were back in college and had this on my assignment list, this is one of the few works I would search Cliff Notes to cover. Sorry.

Gibbon shared with mankind accurate descriptions of the qualities of authority figures. While one learns about the history of Rome, the nature of our survival tendencies is also provided in very elegant and accurate language.

Note the dimensions of this 'edition' before buying. When I opened the box I thought there had been a mistake and the store had send me a high-school Algebra textbook. Nope, this p.o.s. is 8 1/2 X 11 $(&$¶(tm) @ inches. As noted in prior reviews not written by publisher, this has to be one of the single worst examples of typesetting since Gutenberg. Which is funny since I'll bet that the text in this seemingly Kinko's bound thing was lifted directly from the project of the same name... I cannot believe the store is selling this. I feel swindled. Despite it costing more to ship it to and fro than the advertised cost, I will still be returning it.

This edition of the book is just unreadable ! Period.
The font is minuscule, one needs a lens or microscope. Further, the paragraphs are one-page long ! I believe the store and book sellers MUST indicate FONT SIZE in front of every book title they try to sell. From now and on, I took the decision of not ordering any book online before asking the seller on font size !
The book arrived as advertised. Thanks for the seller.

The footnote numbers that appear in the text itself do not link to the individual footnote, but rather to an undifferentiated mass of text called simply "Notes". This is a design flaw in the Kindle edition which does not exist, for example, in Volume II of the same Modern Library E-Book series.
I realize that it is probably indicative of mild mental illness that anyone buys something like this in Kindle form anyway, but I can't help but wish that the purveyors of these editions would take as little more care in their preparation.

Quite and undertaking. Thanks to Kindle it is assessable and possible, a revolution of new understanding.

I had always wanted to read it. Many insights, often quoted but probably read by few.

The problem I have is all the redundant superfluous stuff written by a Christian apologist. You do not know where the garbage starts and ends so that you may read pure Gibbon.

I always wanted pure Gibbon and I am not getting it. Something that would be a difficult read becomes impossible with all the extra unneeded stuff.

So What if Gibbon blamed the fall of Rome on Christians. He is entitled to his opinion even though it is probably wrong. Let it stand on its own merit.

Amazing that such a work could be written at the same time they ratified the Constitution in the US.

The book is not ideal for those who are slightly visually impaired. The font is small and the print is tight. This is the abridged version, but difficult with my eyesight to read it. Of course it's a classic and there are chapters I am longing to read.

Good Read to understand ancient Rome, Emperors, some causes of decline, but you must be interested in ancient history....it will not lend itself to solutions of modern day problems, as History by itself is no forecasting map of what to expect in the future.

Too true and compares to our own times. Rienzi's story and his fate especially resonate. Never buck the establishment. They have a deep state and a lot of sheep like morons who follow their lead. Read the story of Rienzi's rise and fall, and the final plunge of Rome after he did fall. Remind you of anyone?

Typical Twenty-first Century hubris, suggesting that this work should be read in the bite-sized edition and should not be seen as valid or even potential historical analysis. Gibbon was commenting on his time (not that far from our time and the same intellectual environment that produced this country) as much as Roman times and making splendid observations about various dangers that lurked within any organized society.

Gibbon comments at length, for example, on how the early Emperors shunned ostentatious display in order to present the illusion of a still-functioning Republic. The Emperors had so much power (he notes, and I roughly paraphrase) that they did not have to show it off. Sounds a bit like the American Presidency, doesn't it? The most powerful man in the world in a jogging suit? George W. Bush, member of a wealthy ruling elite, pretending to be a "regular Joe" and flimflamming half a nation? Personally I prefered wealthy patrician Presidents--they were at least honest about themselves and, as obliged members of a certain class, were expected to meet certain high standards of behavior and intellect. Both Hitler and Stalin were "of the people" (and startlingly like some of the worst Emperors described in Gibbon!)

In fact much of this 300-year-old gloss on 2000-year-old-goings-on echos the current crisis of the West. Read in this light, this can be an uncomfortable, vaguely dangerous, and politically incorrect book. It explains why Western intellectuals up until relatively recently--all familiar with Gibbon--tended to agree on a lot of basics. Today, people of both the Left and the Right have lost sight of too many of the essentials of freedom and liberty. Gibbon, again, notes how the Empire reached a point where contending sides on any issue weren't debating Liberty versus Empire but simply how the Empire should be administered. Gibbon also makes some interesting observations on how a large, but not overwhelming, military can dominate and control an exceptionally large population; also how a standing army can begin to control the leadership. This isn't banana republic stuff, it's commentary on the pitfalls of Great Republics. His books are stuffed to the gills with this sort of wisdom. Why would you avoid any of it?

Allow me to be insulting: I'm not thrilled with the, again, contemporary predilection toward being patronizing to older Western standard texts. Gibbon was verbose for a reason; this was no modern marketing scheme to entice you to buy volumes you didn't really need. Read all of Gibbon, read it critically, but also read it with humility. Remember that better, more active, and more lucid minds than ours encountered these books and were highly impressed. In the last decades I've watched, horrified, as midgets and munchkins passed vicious judgement on the Western canon. Gibbon comments on that phenomenon too, how the little and often nasty minds--the sort similar to the co-conspirators Shakespeare surrounded Brutus with--eventually gain sway. Western Culture has been hauled down not by sophisticated minds with better to offer but by the jealous and rage-filled, by the greedy, by religious ignoramuses (few excluded), by the mindless mob. No wonder we've been losing our way as a culture.

Finally, the book is written in English, uses few if any words not in the contemporary lexicon, and maintains other accepted standards of syntax. This is not a "tough read" unless you've been raised on milk-soaked bread. In fact if you've managed your way through some of those hideously written jargon riddled texts required in most college courses, modern French philosophers, or somebody like Adorno, then you'll find Gibbon a master of clarity and an utter delight. How anybody in this age of jibberish, buzzwords, and portentious intellectual tripe can complain about the style of this book is a mystery to me! I have little pity for those who stumble and fall off the road whenever they hit a subordinate clause, inverted word order, or a lengthy sentence.

So, read this in full. It's a terrific read. Read Tocqueville, read the Federalist Papers, stop whining about the electoral college and instead find out why it exists. Sit down sometime and try to understand the political reasoning behind the American Civil War, not just the video-game level intellectuality of the feud between the slave-holders and abolitionists. Essentially stop trying to turn History into a one-volume "History for Idiots" manual before forming rock-solid opinions on major issues. You might surprise yourself, you might help prevent a distant future Gibbon from writing unkind words about all of us.

FLLLLAAAAAGGGG it's not the book, just the table of contents. I realize it's free, but come on, you have a six volume set and you're telling me the store's software can't tell the size of the file is functionally zero compared to volume 1? I see the old reviews so maybe the store deleted the incorrect content, though, not offering the free version while giving the appearance that they are seems like a good way to profit of books with expired copyrights. [...]

I've wanted to read this book for years. I thought that listening to while driving would solve my problem. Nope. I cannot tolerate this reader. He is monotone and dull. It was not safe for me to be on the road while listening to this book. Eventually I would have been in prison for vehicular manslaughter caused by this book putting me soundly to sleep. I even tried giving it away. No one else could stand it either.

Kindle Edition : The fact that the copious notes are inserted in the middle of the text in identical font and only identified by square brackets makes the text extremely difficult to parse and essentially unusable.

I will not buy another book on kindle if it has footnotes. It is just too hard to have to go through every footnote and then try to get back to the main text. I think I will look for a used paperback or hardback for this book. I got frustrated after about one hour of reading and gave up and deleted it.

This is terribly frustrating, as the edition of this volume is so much more careless than the other five. The text is frequently interrupted by footnotes and other distractions, so much so that one gives up after the second paragraph. I wonder what it would take to correct this and give us a clean edition.

My god...this is tough to get through. I think they read differently when Gibbon wrote this. It's extremely dense and wordy. If you're REALLY interested in the subject and Gibbon's point of view, you may want to get this. But be prepared for a slog. I confess that I can't handle it.

This edition is unreadable. Multi-page long footnotes written by the editor interrupt the actual text and it is nearly impossible to tell where they end and Gibbon's text resumes. DO NOT buy this edition unless you are mostly interested in reading these footnotes and not Gibbon.

I struggled mightily to decipher this looooooong narrative. I just wasn't getting it. How could someone use so many words and not convey any meaning? The introduction to the study was part 1 of who knows how many books. I started poking around on the first few pages and discovered the text was written before English was invented I think.

Go ahead and buy this tome and prove me wrong, but I'll never open it up again. EVER!

I really wanted to give it a 1-star rating, but in deference to the long-dead author, I magnanimously went with a 2-star.

This review is of the HANS-FRIEDRICH MUELLER edition published in 2005 by Modern Library. Simply, the book is defective, the pages tear out of the spine. I thought it was a one-off and returned for an exchange and had the same problem. I returned it again and instead bought the 2003 edition (Modern Library, Mueller) which is not as thick; it has fewer, larger pages, the spine holds together as it should. The problem with the 2005 edition is the spine is so thick because the pages are smaller the perfect binding seems to fall apart, probably a fault of the printer. I dont know if they are all like that, but the 2003 edition is IMO exactly the same just not as thick and easier to open and read.

This "publisher's" supposed "commitment to the preservation of printed works"--which in the present case involves issuing a photographic reproduction of an 1845(?) edition of a work in the public domain-- would appear to be nothing more than a money-making gimmick. Envision a text whose early sections are marred by frequent underlining, which is then poorly scanned. Add the unforgiveable fact that not just any pages are entirely missing, but very key pages, and you'll have an idea what this volume offers. Appalling that the store or any "reputable" bookseller would offer such trash. Do yourself a favor an look at other editions!

This is false advertising. It is SOME of Gibbon's text interrupted by supposed numerous footnotes that were not written by Gibbon but are in reality commentaries by "christian zealots" who disagree with Gibbon. Some of the supposed footnotes/commentaries are all in Latin. It is not the book Gibbon wrote, nor is it what I thought I was downloading. If I wanted a commentary on Gibbon, I would have bought one. The intolerant, hysterical side of Christianity that Gibbon describes is alive and well here.

This collection is perfectly acceptable. I just wish I were younger with better eyes. I didn't research the availability of a larger book size on the store when I purchased it. After receiving it and realizing the print is too small for my eyes, I researched the availability of a larger size print and found the Folio Society's version. At 14 x 11 x 11, this larger size is much preferable to the smaller Everyman's Library version. I expect to buy the larger size in the near future.

I have not yet read the books ( they were bought as reference material). They came well packaged, clean, pristine and look very good in my library. Delivery was promt and hassle free. I would definitely purchase from this vendor again.

I got this and found they had just scanned the original I suspect paper back the reading area in smaller than the page and they did not bother to remove the scan shadows which to me is spotty work. Ten seconds a page in Paint program using the eraser feature would have made this a better product It was cheap but I only bought to read so I could compare the roman situation to our current situation Are you a Trumps chump if so read this and realize how much of the content is a list of men's names that should give you an idea of the past and its not fake news its history!

I bought a set of Gibbon's decline and fall not published by Penguin and I lost volume II. I ordered Penguin's volume two as a replacement. The problem is Penguin's volume numbers don't match Gibbon's volume numbers. Penguin's volume two does not contain the actual volume two of the decline and fall. Instead, Penguin's volume I contains both Volume I and Volume I and the first chapter of volume III of Gibbon's original. Penguin's volume II contains Gibbon's volume III (minus the first chapter) and volume IV. If you look at the table of contents you'll see what I mean. This ridiculous labeling system is very confusing. I am going to steer clear of Penguin classics in the future.

I have a question that I think you might be able to help me with: should we send this book into space? You know, download it into a golden thumb drive--or perhaps seal a nice leather-bound set in a container--strap it to a rocket, and let it float like the Voyager space probe for all of time. There are weighty reasons for answering in either the positive or negative. Let us examine them.

On the one hand, we have every abominable act, every imaginable vice, every imprudent lunacy able to be committed by man here recorded. After all, this was written by a man who considered history "little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind." Imagine an alien race picking up the capsule and deciphering our language. Imagine the looks on their faces (if they have faces) when they hear of the grotesque bunch of bipeds on the other side of the galaxy who do nothing but rape, pillage, and kill each other. Imagine this happens after our sun explodes or we blow ourselves up; this is the last utterance of an extinguished species. Would we want it to be this? Why not Don Quixote or the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?

On the other hand, intimately connected with this narrative of wickedness and stupidity, inextricably intertwined in the fabric of the narrative, is the genius of its author. Who could read a single page of this great book and not be humbled by the quality of his thought, the care of his method, the power of his prose? If ever there was a document that singlehandedly redeems all of the idiocy our race insistently indulges in, it's this book. At least the aliens would know that one of us had a good head on our shoulders.

It is impossible to discuss this work without its author. In perusing The Decline and Fall we find innumerable facets of Gibbon: the philosopher, the poet, the politician, the theologian, the strategist, the humanist, the public servant, the yellow journalist, the sage, (and the historian). But what we find, most of all, is Gibbon the lover of life. No man has ever loved more the variegated tapestry of human affairs--from the daily ritual of a serf to the greatest battles ever waged, from the planning of a palace to the marital squabbles of a prince. He will cast a glance at events large and small, weigh the facts with a disinterested hand, and with a knowing nod and amiable wink he will describe them in his inimitable prose. Gibbon views life like well-aged wine; he will take it in sips and draughts, savoring every strain in the flavor--from the musky, rotten odor to the sweet, honeyed tinge--and then discuss it with you at length. He is a connoisseur of life, won't you join him for a drink?

The first volume I downloaded was wonderful and original. The shock I had when reading this was great, as some Christian bisop uses this to argue with a dead author and interrups constantly. BAD and ANNOYING

Edward Gibbon's masterpiece, 'The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' is I think the greatest work of prose in English relating to history, and will also stand besides volumes such as Thucydides, Tacitus, Herodotus and Livy in the ages to come, unless we blow ourselves up in a nuclear conflagration.

While many of Gibbon's limitations in this work as a historian are now apparent (like most Enlightenment thinkers, Gibbon detested religion and saw the rise of Christianity as a baleful influence on Western Civilisation, and did not have access to modern scientific archaeology or many texts now recovered but presumed loss), this is compensated by his remarkably balanced and judicious use of source materials, critical methodology and approach, beautiful style of writing, and amazing memory for facts, events, people and places relevant to his work. His detailed analysis of the flourishing, decay and eventual collapse of the Roman Empire and correct identification of the root causes remain compelling and also concerning given contemporary political events.

Gibbon's ultimate achievement is to show that no empire or nation, no matter how powerful or grand it may seem, can last forever and collapse is almost always not because of 'outsiders' but due to internal factors, most critically a failure of political leadership at the highest levels. Those who assume for example, that by simply concentrating all political authority and power on a single individual (dictatorship) or expelling the 'other' (a hated minority or group) should see that after Gibbon's analysis, collapse comes from tyranny and the corruption of power from within, rather than hatred of those 'outside' (who often and invariably serve as a foil and distraction for domestic problems, as we sadly see today).

As Steven Pinker, Michael Shermer and others argue, we need to return to the Enlightenment and its values if Western Civilisation is to continue to be a force in history, or fades away and joins the dustbin like the Roman and later the Byzantine Greek Empires did. There is no absolute guarantee Western or any other civilisation will not collapse or fade away in the future into irrelevancy if it does not adapt and change.

A must read along with Ayn Rands "Atlas Shrugged" and "Democracy In Ameria" is a must read for all those that love this country, You will get a better understandin of what is going on today with the socilaists in the democrat party

Well, after more than a year of off and on reading I finally finished the first volume of Gibbon's vast chronicle and only have five massive books to go. All in all it has been a wonderful journey, tedious at times, but wonderful! This first volume was first published in 1776 and now, after over 200 years still stands as one of the great pillars in the cannon of Western Literature and of course is still a framework used by historians even to this day.

There are of course three aspects of this work that need to be considered. The first of course is the history. Gibbon is considered by many as the first modern historian. He broke new ground (more about that later), and gives us a very good view of the Roman Empire as seen through the eyes of a man of his time. Secondly, this is most certainly a literary work of no mean quality. It is actually an absolute gem; a work of art is words. Third, there is the history of the history; the placing of Gibbons work as a historical event within itself, which is sometimes overlooked.

Now shear volumes have been written concerning this early study of the Roman culture, both critical and laudatory. I have great doubts that anything I say here will add to this mound of observations which have been gathering since the ink dried on the first printing of the work. I can only give you, the reader, my personal perspectives; keeping in mind that I am not in anyway a historian, theologian nor literary master. No, I am just a common `good old boy,' living in the hills that likes to read, loves history and enjoys a reading challenge.
I have a bound set of these books on my bookshelf and I must admit that they sat there for a couple of years. I would stare at them now and then, fondle them at times late at night, but through shear intimidation of the size, kept putting it off and off. Years ago I did the same thing with Will Durant's massive, multi-volume `The Story of Civilization' before I followed the advice of the shoe commercial..."Just do it." I have never regretted that. Much the same is holding true for Gibbon's work; I decided to "just do it."

Before I go on with the book review, I have some personal suggestions, if I may be so bold, as to the approach is reading this work. First, get over the magnitude of the mass of words found here. Take this first volume is small doses. I will not lie to you; the reading of this first volume is hard word, especially for someone like me with limited intellectual abilities and who is woefully lacking in formal education in this field. Let not this distract you though. You need not have a wonderful educational background or bright and shinning intellect to learn; to come to appreciate the essence of this work. Secondly, when you first start, take the work and break it down into small sections. I would sometimes take an hour just of read and savor a single paragraph, reading it over and over again. The arcane language; the convoluted and complex sentence and paragraph structure (May I use the term "mulifarious?"), will suddenly pop for you (hopefully), and will be like candy to your eye and mind. I further broke the work down into sections, actually taking them out of order. Indeed, I started reading this volume by beginning with the famous, or infamous, depending on how you look at it, Chapters 15 and 16. (More about this later).

To continue, I would also, unless you are already pretty familiar with the chronological history of the Roman Empire, suggest that you have a good outline, a simple outline, of Roman history available. The plethora of rulers, gods, players, etc., can be a bit overwhelming and I found myself quickly lost trying to keep all the players straight. Thank goodness for google and Wikipedia...both were a tremendous help!

I would also encourage you to give the work, as to the writing, a chance. At first, like me, many will find the style as was used in this era difficult to follow. Fear not though, as you read it will begin to flow and suddenly you will find yourself absolutely delighted...or not. If not, then it would probably be best to drop the book and go on to something else...each of us is quite different you know.

It is quite interesting to note that vestiges of Gibbons work are alive and well even to this day. I happen to be in the process of reading two works at this time (concurrently), by Charles Freeman...A.D. 381: Heretics, Pagans, and the Dawn of the Monotheistic State and his previous work, The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason These are very nice and well written books and I am enjoying each and learning much. But when you get right down to it, from what I have read so far in these two works, we are getting a very strong dose of Gibbon, warmed over by Freeman. (I must state that Freeman is much easier to read...a delight, as a matter of fact).

I think that one of the (from a historical aspect) things I appreciate the most about Gibbons work is that he was one of the fist historians that treated the writings of the Catholic Church as secondary documents rather than primary. This had not been done all that much before as the Church pretty well had a lock on things; not only religion, but history and science also. This was a bold step on Gibbons part and he certainly took a beating for it at the time...still is, come to think of it. Had Gibbons written what he wrote just a few years sooner, changes are pretty good he would have been fried or toasted. Anyway, in my opinion, for what it is worth, this was a good thing and certainly could, in my mind, be considered intellectual progress weather or not you agree with him.

Was it worth the time I took to read this work? From my point of view and considering my needs; yes! Will I read the rest of the volumes? Well, I will attempt, although at my age and considering my reading speed, it is quite problematic as to weather or not I will finish them.

NOTE: It should be noted that this entire work...all six volumes, can be downloaded to your Kindle for free. This is a good thing. I have not done this yet as I have the printed versions here, but I did take a brief look on a friend's Kindle. These down loads are good, but the quality is not the best and there are a few pages missing here and there...but hey, they are free so you cannot complain too much, you know. I have so many books downloaded in my little reading machine I need to do some catch-up before I continue.

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

The the store description says Vol. 1-3, boxed set, hardcover. That is all true. What they don't tell you is that there are actually six volumes. The box in which it comes is clearly marked, "Volumes 1-3 (of six)." That would have been a much better description for the store to have used. If you have volumes 4-6 and you are looking to complete the set, this book is for you. If you are looking for the complete set, look elsewhere.

Type is way too small for my tired old eyes, hence the low rating. You can't rate highly that which you can't read. From snippets I was able to read it looks like a fabulous rendition of the story of the Roman Empire.

I've wanted to read this book for years. I thought that listening to it while driving would solve my problem of not being able to slog through it. Nope. I cannot tolerate this narrator. He is monotone and dull. It was not safe for me to be on the road while listening to this book. Eventually I would have been in prison for vehicular manslaughter - caused by this book putting me soundly to sleep. I even tried giving it away. No one else could stand it either.

I echo the comments of the other reviewer. This is a very ambitious read, but it is rewarding both in terms of its timeless historical content, but also Gibbon's prose, which reads like poetry at times. The books themselves are quite beautiful. For various reasons I have read volumes 1-3 twice, and am only now making my way through volumes 4-6. The final three volumes cover around 1000 years, while the first three cover around 500 years, so the pace necessarily picks up in the final three volumes. Gibbon (for good reason) spends a lot of time on the reign of Justinian, so the Byzantine era is actually compressed even more in volumes five and six.

There are many other good books about the time period covered by Gibbon, but I can't imagine having an interest in this era and not reading The Decline and Fall. It remains essential, centuries after it was written.

The first volume of Modern Library’s three-volume reprint of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire covers the first 26 chapters of the author’s epic historical work. Beginning with the death of Domitian and ending with Theodosius I’s treaty with the Goths and early reign, Gibbon’s spans nearly 300 years of political, social, and religious history on how the great empire of antiquity slowly began to fade from the its greatest heights.

The history of the decline of Rome actually begins by showing the nearly century long period of rule of the “Five Good Emperors” as Gibbon shows the growth of absolute power of the Principate was governed by able and intelligent men. With succession of Commodus Gibbon illustrated what the power of the Principate would do for an individual who was a corrupt and tyrannical ruler. Gibbon’s then examines the political and military fallout of the death of Commodus with the declaration of five emperors in less than a year and rise of the Severan dynasty by conquest. Gibbon reveals underlining causes of era of the ‘Barracks Emperors’ and what historians call, “the Crisis of the Third Century”.

With the ascension of Diocletian and through him the rise of the House of Constantine, Gibbon explores the political and bureaucratic reforms began and developed that would eventually divide the empire in his view. After Constantine’s rise to sole emperor, Gibbon then delves into the early history of Christianity before it’s adoption by the founder of Constantinople. Beginning with Constantine, the last half of this particular volume as the history and theological developments of Christianity as a central narrative as one of the contributing factors of the decline of the Roman Empire.

Although the description above might make one pause at starting the heavy work, Gibbon’s style and prose make history come alive with every word and gives the reader a sense of the grand scale of historical forces while not overwhelming them. While every reader will have their own verdict on if Gibbon’s arguments and interruptions of history are correct, each avid history lover will find this opening volume of Gibbon’s magnum opus an engaging beginning in examining how one of the foundation stones of Western Civilization came to its political end while passing on its laws and culture to Europe.

Examining a period of world (european) history (late antiquity throughout the middle ages) crucial to the understanding of western civilization, this book is a treasure. Edward Gibbon, drawing from various sources, most of them contemporary of the facts it exposes, traces the history of the Roman Empire in the west and in the east. Along the way, he discuss christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, the crusades, the beginning of the Muslim faith and the advent of the Ottoman Empire. The successive battles between the romans and the barbarian are explained in a way that one understands the facts that underline the formation of modern european states. The author is not shy in declining his views about the events, with renders the book even more fascinating. An enlightening reading!

I purchased this book in December of last year and I want to add my comment to say that it is absolutely amazing if you know what you're getting yourself into. It's hard to believe that it was written over 200 years ago. It is abstruse, but surprisingly readable if you're at all used to reading older literature. I'm not sure what the recent comments about "scanned" pages are about - the six volumes I have are simply but beautifully bound and the pages and text (with all the footnotes) are great.

One note: due to a mistake I ended up with this set and the two parts sold separately (vol. 1-3 and 4-6). They are the same thing! Don't let the different publication dates fool you - I believe the later date on the complete set simply refers to when they decided to bundle them together as one set. the store seems to discount the separate sets more, so I would recommend purchasing it that way. Check the Everyman's website if you don't believe me.

One final note: I have a decent grasp of Roman and Byzantine history, but I have to constantly look up Wikipedia articles to supplement the text. Gibbon expects a lot from us. I usually keep open the Wikipedia list of Roman Emperors while reading.

As titanic as this book is, the job of reading it is even more so.

I won't say I didn't like it because I wouldn't have stuck to it for so long if I hadn't but it takes every ounce of patience and constancy that is hard to come by in this short-attention-span modern world of ours.

Not only that but history repeating itself makes for tedious reading, especially when you get to the early Middle Ages, when there were a bunch of proto-European tribes clubbing each other to death to gain pieces of land.

Also, because of the huge subject matter (spanning over more than a thousand years) Gibbon naturally had to summarize some episodes but this made it hard for me to grasp what was going on because it's the first time I had ever heard of these things. Sometimes I found three generations of Eastern Caesars or sultans crammed together into one paragraph. It was hard to keep track of all of them, especially since they kept coming back after a few pages.

Aside from that, Gibbon is actually quite funny and surprisingly objective, though he does show some bias here and there.

I found his descriptions of Mahomet and the birth of Islam the most entertainig (he always sets all gullibility aside when it comes to religions, so it was hard for me not to like him).

The first part of the book is the best, really, when he begins with the last Roman emperors (it helps to know about the first Caesars, by the way). Maybe because I'm more familiar with that part of history but also I think it's because of all the decadent and perverse drama that the crazy Caesars stirred up.

All in all, I'm proud of myself for reading this one but beware. It took me seven months to finish it and it was kind of driving me crazy. If you can read the abridged version, do that instead.

NOTE ON THE KINDLE VERSION: There are way too many footnotes and most of them are fastidious and useless, which makes for reading on the Kindle kind of difficult. But, then again, you wouldn't want to lug around what I can only guess is about 60 pounds of pages.

This is the definitive modern edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike most recent editions, this one is absolutely complete and unabridged in the text and including the footnotes. Its a massive box set true to the original text from the 1700s and edited by David Womersley. Its 4100 pages in six hardcover volumes. The third edition is the absolute best due to various minor corrections in the earlier editions. It is a very expensive set. Those who want a great edition that isn't complete in every footnote could go to the eight-volume folio society edition as an alternative.

The Womersley edited version was also the basis for the Penguin paperback edition. Its virtue is that unlike certain editors in the 1800s, Womersley does not see his task to argue with Gibbon.

The first volume of Modern Library’s three-volume reprint of Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire covers the first 26 chapters of the author’s epic historical work. Beginning with the death of Domitian and ending with Theodosius I’s treaty with the Goths and early reign, Gibbon’s spans nearly 300 years of political, social, and religious history on how the great empire of antiquity slowly began to fade from the its greatest heights.

The history of the decline of Rome actually begins by showing the nearly century long period of rule of the “Five Good Emperors” as Gibbon shows the growth of absolute power of the Principate was governed by able and intelligent men. With succession of Commodus Gibbon illustrated what the power of the Principate would do for an individual who was a corrupt and tyrannical ruler. Gibbon’s then examines the political and military fallout of the death of Commodus with the declaration of five emperors in less than a year and rise of the Severan dynasty by conquest. Gibbon reveals underlining causes of era of the ‘Barracks Emperors’ and what historians call, “the Crisis of the Third Century”.

With the ascension of Diocletian and through him the rise of the House of Constantine, Gibbon explores the political and bureaucratic reforms began and developed that would eventually divide the empire in his view. After Constantine’s rise to sole emperor, Gibbon then delves into the early history of Christianity before it’s adoption by the founder of Constantinople. Beginning with Constantine, the last half of this particular volume as the history and theological developments of Christianity as a central narrative as one of the contributing factors of the decline of the Roman Empire.

Although the description above might make one pause at starting the heavy work, Gibbon’s style and prose make history come alive with every word and gives the reader a sense of the grand scale of historical forces while not overwhelming them. While every reader will have their own verdict on if Gibbon’s arguments and interruptions of history are correct, each avid history lover will find this opening volume of Gibbon’s magnum opus an engaging beginning in examining how one of the foundation stones of Western Civilization came to its political end while passing on its laws and culture to Europe.

Examining a period of world (european) history (late antiquity throughout the middle ages) crucial to the understanding of western civilization, this book is a treasure. Edward Gibbon, drawing from various sources, most of them contemporary of the facts it exposes, traces the history of the Roman Empire in the west and in the east. Along the way, he discuss christianity, the Roman Catholic Church, the crusades, the beginning of the Muslim faith and the advent of the Ottoman Empire. The successive battles between the romans and the barbarian are explained in a way that one understands the facts that underline the formation of modern european states. The author is not shy in declining his views about the events, with renders the book even more fascinating. An enlightening reading!

I purchased this book in December of last year and I want to add my comment to say that it is absolutely amazing if you know what you're getting yourself into. It's hard to believe that it was written over 200 years ago. It is abstruse, but surprisingly readable if you're at all used to reading older literature. I'm not sure what the recent comments about "scanned" pages are about - the six volumes I have are simply but beautifully bound and the pages and text (with all the footnotes) are great.

One note: due to a mistake I ended up with this set and the two parts sold separately (vol. 1-3 and 4-6). They are the same thing! Don't let the different publication dates fool you - I believe the later date on the complete set simply refers to when they decided to bundle them together as one set. the store seems to discount the separate sets more, so I would recommend purchasing it that way. Check the Everyman's website if you don't believe me.

One final note: I have a decent grasp of Roman and Byzantine history, but I have to constantly look up Wikipedia articles to supplement the text. Gibbon expects a lot from us. I usually keep open the Wikipedia list of Roman Emperors while reading.

As titanic as this book is, the job of reading it is even more so.

I won't say I didn't like it because I wouldn't have stuck to it for so long if I hadn't but it takes every ounce of patience and constancy that is hard to come by in this short-attention-span modern world of ours.

Not only that but history repeating itself makes for tedious reading, especially when you get to the early Middle Ages, when there were a bunch of proto-European tribes clubbing each other to death to gain pieces of land.

Also, because of the huge subject matter (spanning over more than a thousand years) Gibbon naturally had to summarize some episodes but this made it hard for me to grasp what was going on because it's the first time I had ever heard of these things. Sometimes I found three generations of Eastern Caesars or sultans crammed together into one paragraph. It was hard to keep track of all of them, especially since they kept coming back after a few pages.

Aside from that, Gibbon is actually quite funny and surprisingly objective, though he does show some bias here and there.

I found his descriptions of Mahomet and the birth of Islam the most entertainig (he always sets all gullibility aside when it comes to religions, so it was hard for me not to like him).

The first part of the book is the best, really, when he begins with the last Roman emperors (it helps to know about the first Caesars, by the way). Maybe because I'm more familiar with that part of history but also I think it's because of all the decadent and perverse drama that the crazy Caesars stirred up.

All in all, I'm proud of myself for reading this one but beware. It took me seven months to finish it and it was kind of driving me crazy. If you can read the abridged version, do that instead.

NOTE ON THE KINDLE VERSION: There are way too many footnotes and most of them are fastidious and useless, which makes for reading on the Kindle kind of difficult. But, then again, you wouldn't want to lug around what I can only guess is about 60 pounds of pages.

This is the definitive modern edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Unlike most recent editions, this one is absolutely complete and unabridged in the text and including the footnotes. Its a massive box set true to the original text from the 1700s and edited by David Womersley. Its 4100 pages in six hardcover volumes. The third edition is the absolute best due to various minor corrections in the earlier editions. It is a very expensive set. Those who want a great edition that isn't complete in every footnote could go to the eight-volume folio society edition as an alternative.

The Womersley edited version was also the basis for the Penguin paperback edition. Its virtue is that unlike certain editors in the 1800s, Womersley does not see his task to argue with Gibbon.

I was exasperated by this book after reading the work about so many people accepting the Imperial purple and assuming the titles of "Caesar" and "Augustus," taking the diadem and sceptre (or distaff for the ladies), usually by participating in the death of the immediate predecessor. Or of the liberal markets set up for soldiers whose for whom a large donative from the Emperor was set up to check their rapine. Gibbon loves his words.

It gets repetitive at times, and it's often hard to keep track without re-reading. And Gibbon's excessive admiration of Julian, the Antonines, Belisarius, and many others can get a little tedious. The biggest problem, though, is that Gibbon treats so much as a narrative, and as dense as it is with so many different stories, you can easily get lost. The lack of dates in the text make it very difficult to keep track of who you are talking about and keep them in the wider context of what is happening in that time period. Numerous times I had to re-read entire chapters just to keep straight who he was talking about, and what century he was in. A lot of this is the repetitive nature of the history itself, but Gibbon has difficulty really walking the reader through it. (Was he talking about the Lombards, the Vandals, or the Visigoths there? Have to re-read to find out.)

Gibbon also likes to go off into asides, which I think is unavoidable in a work this long. Opinions about Wycliffe, Calvin and Zwingli, hereditary monarchy, strengths and weaknesses of the sexes (including reliability of female authorship), or even the justification of slavery or the massacre of Barbarian youth, &c., are entertaining, help to break up the history, but don't necessarily stay true to the subject matter. [Note that Gibbon does not condone slavery, for example, but minimizes it as problem - modern historians love to take issue with this.]

An appreciation of these volumes also requires a fairly thorough understanding of the period's history to begin with. He talks about the Jacobites, and I couldn't understand why he's suddenly off by over a millennium until I find out who they are, as it is very easy to miss his introductions. He spends lots of energy on the Arian heresy, the Paulicians, Greens vs. Blues, etc. which can lose the reader who is only briefly accustomed with such things. And not knowing the order of western Roman Emperors or their place in history coming in can put many of his stories in the first three volumes over the reader's head.

As for the structure, he comes at it from multiple angles. The majority of the work is purely descriptive from the perspective of rulers, who they fought, what they did, whether or not Gibbon deems them "virtuous," &c. But I think the most interesting parts are the chapters describing the basics of how things worked in that world: how the army was organized, the differences in fighting through the centuries, the legal codes, how families were organized, the concepts of morality, the makeup and numbers of the early Christians, etc. At the very least, these parts give the reader respite.

I would definitely recommend having a map handy, particularly of the near east with historical names, for reading much of this as well.

In my opinion, the strength of this work is not in the Roman Empire itself, but in the last few volumes of how Europe came to be what it is today through the lens of the fall of Rome. If you look at France not looking from modern times backward, but from the Germanic tribes near the Rhine in the 5th century forward, it lends a very different view. How did all that happen? When did the Roman Empire stop using Latin? The last few volumes might as well be titled "The History of Eurasia and North Africa from the Decline of the Western Roman Empire through the Fall of Constantinople." A lot of people were very surprised when I was talking about the history of the Normans, the Crusades, of Russia and Hungary, of Mohammed and Chosroes, of Genghis Khan and Timur (Tamerlane) devoted significant time by Gibbon. What does that have to do with Rome? In a way, it's biting off more than one can chew by tackling so much.

Overall, it's hard to see how one could do a better job of such a monumental task chronicling Rome from Octavian through the Palaeologi. And it is a worthy and fair read - I did learn a lot, and was often entertained. But it is clearly asking a lot of its audience.

Found in a letter dated February 13 1844 from my great-great-great-uncle George Mackenzie in India to his sister Alice in Scotland: "Have you ever read Gibbon's Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire? I am very fond of it for many reasons. It is a grand book and to read it always makes me feel as if my life extended thousands instead of tens of years and as if I could trace out the revolutions of Empires. It is beautifully written and the English of it is to my taste particularly elegant, and except where Gibbon's judgement was obscured by his prejudice, it is true as history can be. His reasonings from the great events which he relates are generally speaking very true and I have heard that there is hardly a better guide for a politician than that history. What an immensely long duration the time of it is - from the year 90 after Christ till the year 1490 or thereabouts in fact almost down to our own times. It is a great ornament to my bookcase and I often read it & prefer it to any novel whatsoever." So the 5 stars are on behalf of Uncle George who sadly died later in 1844 aged 25.

The following paraphrase is one of the most famous passages in Gibbon's monumental history:
The various religions in Rome during the times of the Antonines were all considered equally true by the people, equally false by the philosophers, and equally useful by the magistrates.
I love a good provocation.
Gibbon's notion of pagan tolerance has been heavily debated. In general he claims that our perception of Christian martyrdom in Rome is vastly exaggerated and dominated by church historiography, which eradicated conflicting versions when in power. Gibbon was not very popular with the Church for his paganophilia.

I have always wanted to read Gibbon, but my one previous attempt failed. I had tried a German abbreviated translation and fell asleep. It was so dry I might have attracted a dust lung had I continued.
Now I find that the original is anything but dry. Quite to the contrary, the man was a master stylist and I wonder how the translator could disfigure him so. Must have been an agent in the pay of the church.

Now I attack Mount Gibbon on kindle. Reading non fiction on kindle, when there are footnotes and endnotes, is often hazardous and messy. It works quite well here with Gibbon's own notes, but an editor keeps adding his own notes and sometimes creates a mess.
The editor feels compelled to intervene when he finds Gibbon too outrageous. The issue of pagan tolerance is one such instance. Another is the alleged lack of sympathy on Gibbon's part for Rome's slaves. And then there are trifles like Gibbon's little joke about Palestine having been as large, fertile and important as Wales ... Which seems to be some kind of blasphemy, both to Wales and to bible defenders of the greatness of Palestine.

At times it is not clear where the text ends and the editor notes begin. That could surely be done better, but what can you expect in a product that costs 0.95$. But it surely merits the deduction of a star. Apologies to Mr.Gibbon.
Though this edition is also abbreviated, it is still somewhere over 900 pages in the print version. Those of my fans (I have some 80 of them, says the store) who are desperately waiting for many reviews from me may need to practice some patience in the near future.

I hadn't realized that this version didn't contain the full footnotes. Thanks to the other reviewer who pointed this out. I have only started reading the Modern Library version (I bought the volumes separately, but this is just all of them together).

For anyone who's interested, they can look inside the paperback version The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1 and see that not only are the footnotes in this Kindle version truncated. To be fair, though it seems that some of the footnotes that are left out are citations to specific authors / books. But it does seem that some of the footnotes are truncated too.

The Penguin version also has section headers. So, even in Chapter 1, "The Extent and Military Force of the Empire in the Age of the Antonines", it has a section titled "Introduction", "Moderation of Augustus", "Imitated by his successors", "Conquest of Britain was the first exception to it".

I don't know if these are in the original, but they do seem to make reading the book a little easier.

There is an abridged version for the Kindle by Womersley The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Penguin Classics) which appears to have both section notes and maybe the complete footnotes.

As far as I can tell this is the only unabridged version by a big publishing company on the Kindle.

This work is as old as the declaration of independence but it still remains a classic of literature and the longest read ever. His writing style can sometimes be heavy but get used to it, you will feel rewarded at the end. Of course some of his facts and interpretations are dated by now but surprisingly he got most of the facts right. His thesis of the slow decline and fall of the empire from internal and moral problems have by now Benn discredited but I believe the truth lies somewhere in between the inner and external problems. The almost none stop and constant civil wars has something to do with the ultimate collapse of the western Roman Empire highly recommend

...the "barbarians" took it back. Rome lasted over a millennium, and the length of its rule, and civilizing influence has never been matched, even by China. Edward Gibbon wrote his classic account of this empire's decline in the later half of the 18th Century, an astonishing work of erudition long before Google has simplified the research task. The entire history covers over 3000 pages; even the abridged version is daunting at over 800 pages. This work "nags' any bibliophile. Can I "shuck off my mortal coil" and not have read it? I gratifyingly took the plunge, and was richly rewarded.

There are numerous versions of this epic work extant. I read the Penguin Classics version, but the one edited and with an introduction by Dero A. Saunders. He identified one of the key strengths of Gibbon's work: "...understanding the irrational in human history." How humans will embrace actions and courses of behavior that are not in their enlightened self-interest. Gibbon's scope is broad, ranging from the large, sweeping forces that dominate history to the telling anecdote of individual action that illuminates those trends. He depicts the economic, military, religious, and political forces that eventually led to Rome's downfall. Gibbon has his "biases," and displays them more than the "average" historian, and he reaps some criticism for them, but since they all too often resonate with my own, and there are no subtle attempts to hide them, I give them a "pass."

Time and again, Gibbon's insights on the human condition, not just the Roman Empire, have withstood the test of time; indeed, he has often established the standard. Consider the quote from Diocletian: "...the best and wisest princes are sold to the venal corruption of their courtiers." On the discourse of the defeated, in this case, Mistrianus: "...he expatiated on the common topics of moderation and humanity, which are so familiar to the eloquence of the vanquished." On nostalgia: "Notwithstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past and to deprecate the present..." On power: "Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable in nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude." Or consider a wryly ironic commentary on the "do nothing" course of action: "...he was deprived of the favorite resource of feeble and timid minds, who consider the use of dilatory and ambiguous measures at the most admirable efforts of consummate prudence." There is nothing stale in Gibbon's prose; just the occasional tendency to the rococo.

Gibbon was a principal force of the Enlightenment, and his work is permeated with a jaundiced view of religion in practice. His work fulfills this sentiment: "The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings." Eternal truths concerning the power and the glory: "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." Another strength of this book is his depiction of the intolerance of the early Christians: "the prelates of the third century imperceptibly changed the language of exhortation into that of command..."

This history is often cited as a cautionary tale for those in the American empire. As with all such historical analogies, particularly on broad subjects, there is much that is relevant, as well as the opposite. Gibbon devotes considerable attention to the military aspects of empire, and it is particularly relevant, as I post this review on Memorial Day, that military duty has become irrelevant to the vast majority of the American population, as it did in Rome. Considering jurisprudence, Gibbon's observations could have tumbled out of yesterday's newspaper: "A faithful subject of Syria, perhaps, or of Britain, was exposed to the danger, or at least the dread, of being dragged off in chains to the court... and the defects of evidence were diligently supplied by the use of torture." Or later: "...in all cases of treason, suspicion is equivalent to proof."

There are probably only 100 individuals who have the historical knowledge that would be sufficient to provide context to all the historical figures that Gibbon identifies. Thus, there are aspects of the read that are a humbling slog. Still, with the nuggets of insight available, only a small portion of which have been cited above, it is more than worthwhile, and should be placed on the must-finish list while retaining that proverbial coil. Americans do not have a monopoly of hubris, or just plain irrationality. I had the opportunity to read this book the week I was in Dubai, 2003, now site of the tallest building, Burj Khalifa, and one of the emptiest. Those historical lessons that Gibbon renders can be ignored on a global basis, maybe even in China. Still, 5-stars plus.

The Roman empire speaks of the political and military genius of Western civilization. A tribe of people united, armored, and powered by their love of freedom and virtue first subdues the other tribes of Italy, then the whole of Europe and much of Africa and Asia, and ultimately stand in one way or another for 1,500 years. As Edward Gibbon in his brilliant and sparking, haunting and stunning prose explains, the genius of Rome became manifest in its political system that balanced the factions and interests of Rome with such audacious brilliance that the whole of Rome was dedicated to freedom and virtue, and every Roman would happily and jealously join the banner of the Roman army. If the armies of Rome's deadliest enemies -- the Goths, the Vandals, the Persians, and ultimately the Ottomans -- were driven by greed and fear, then the Roman legions' shield and armor were honor and liberty. Ironically, in defending the republic, Rome's legions were to expand so deep into enemy territory that they became too mired in luxury and corruption that they would bring back such vices to the Roman republic, an inevitable fact of territorial expansion that would help transform Rome from republic to empire.

It was having read Gibbon's masterpiece and too easily seen the parallels between a declining Roman empire and an ascending British empire that prompted Edmund Burke's memorable orations at the Warren Hastings trial -- Burke solemnly and fiercely warned the British people how Indian nabobs were exploiting the wealth of India, and using this wealth to corrupt the political process and liberty back in England. Surprisingly, Gibbon doesn't hark back on the golden days of the Roman republic, and only cursorily mentions Cicero and Cato. Gibbon posits an interesting question -- the question isn't why the Roman empire fell (the rise and fall of empires is as common in the historical landscape as are mountains in the natural) but how it lasted for such a long time. The answer must lie in the inherent genius of the Roman republic, virtues that did not decay with empire but somehow were kept alive in the breasts of Rome's noblest citizens. China's dynasties continuously declined from their inception, duplicity and servility as well as corruption and luxury too firmly rooted in the Chinese soil for anything solid and meaningful to grow. But Rome did not fall and decline continuously, and some heroes arose who bore the promise of republican revival. There is Julian, that noblest of all emperors, who shocked and armored his legions and his people with his intellect and his virtue, his justice and his toleration. Ultimately, he fell when his chief virtue -- his love of fame -- during his rise to power became his chief vice during his rule, as he sought to subdued the Roman empire. (Ironically, Julian has all too many similarities with Zhuge Liang, the hero of the Chinese epic "Romance of the Three Kingdoms," a hero loved by the people but who only brought suffering and misery to his people when he sought to expand his empire.) And then there is that great general Belisarius whose main strength was his loyalty to the Roman empire and whose main failing was his loyalty to a degenerate emperor and a cruel wife.

Edward Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is a truly exceptional piece of literature. It is difficult and challenging, but it is also decidedly brilliant and memorable. If Rome itself does not stand then what it represents -- republican virtue and love of freedom -- still burns deep in America, its most direct descendant, and Gibbon's words are a testament of the beauty and economy of the English language.

The other Complete Decline and Fall that gets lots of reviews has in-line footnotes, which are awful. This one has hyperlinked footnotes, which is great but...

The section headings for each section succeed rather than precede each section. So you read a section on Spain...and when you read the last word in that section, you get the Spain heading. Then you read a section on Gaul...and get the Gaul heading. Horrible since the guideposts all follow the relevant text. Not as unreadable as the Kindle editions with in line footnotes but pretty awful nevertheless. For $13, I'd just save your money. Come on Penguin: Straighten this out. I'm willing to pay money but you screwed me. As an avid Penguin reader, I'm very disappointed that they let something like this out...in a world full of Free Gibbons, if you are going to charge $13, it should at least be free of obvious mistakes.

Poorly done--stars reflect the price:quality ratio of the Kindle edition. The actual work is 5 stars.

I hope Penguin fixes this. If they do, I'll happily post an update to this review. Until then, assume it's still a mess.

Like AndreasG, it took me a full two months to read all 903 pages of this classic. The font is so small, the paragraphs so long, and the vocabulary so erudite that I could only read it in natural sunlight (usually by the pool in Hawaii). A kindle version, properly done, would be very helpful if only to speed up or increase understanding of the words being used.

This book teaches us that mankind really has not changed much. Reading portions of Gibbon's descriptions of, for example, what daily life was like for upper class or middle class Romans before the fall brings to mind modern America with all of our flaws. There is also an excellent tracing of the rise of Islam, which is immediately relevant. As I read, I admired the effort of the author more and more. And how delightful that he wrote this in the 1770s and 1780s.

In all respects, I agree with the review of AndreasG.

edited by Hans-Fredrich Mueller

I finally finished this massive treasure, which isn't even exhaustive. And I can't imagine the colossal task in both time and energy it took to write it. It took Gibbon twelve years, from 1776 to 1788. I find it more than a coincidence that he began writing in the year of our independence. Even in this abridged form (which is what you will more likely come across) it is still a huge undertaking; though Mueller, in his critical forward, tells us it is necessary for it to become readable. Mueller also says he prided himself in being meticulous and accurate while still being manageable. And very helpful is the addition of dates bracketed throughout the text. An index would have been useful. In Boorstin's introduction he cites the major impact this work had on him; he calls it intimate. I would have never thought of it in that way, but now after ingesting all six volumes I understand why he calls it intimate. Gibbon does not mince words either. His work will always be remembered and its impact can still be felt today. He is an artist, like no one I have read before. Keep a dictionary handy. I also recommend reading the forward and the introduction, especially after studying Gibbon's great work. They take into question Gibbon's devotion to Christianity and his offensiveness towards it. I see Gibbon as mixed in his beliefs, though he wrote as he saw it; and I find that he saw the truth when he found it. Did he believe infrastructure was valued over its people?

The role of emperor was not a secure job. "Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same." The polytheistic Roman Empire was very much a melting pot (half slaves) and within it were many schisms. I see parallels---such as the oppressive taxes, the corrupt politicians, the tyrannical government, the effemination, and the endless warfare---to our United States, and a warning for our future.

So what caused the fall? For Gibbon, the gradual decline began after Christ, until the eventual fall some fifteen hundred years later. Chapters are built upon the reigns of the emperors as they came to power, except where he periodically inserts chapters concerning the Christian influence, the Christian persecutions, the corrupt church, the persecution of the church toward others, the Crusades, the rise of Islam, the debilitating taxes and, towards the end, he concentrates on the impact by the surrounding nations. The Empire became a black hole and split to form an East and a West---the West to totally collapse. There were many causes: the slow introduction of Christianity over Paganism and the conversion to it, the collapse of the military, the always and increasing threat of outside peoples, alienating allies and provoking enemies, the corruption within (the people), and of course the self righteous emperors. Entropy would take over and finally lead to the collapse of the infrastructure.

Rome was both a curse and a blessing for Christianity. Many were converted, but the power of Catholicism and the Pope led to the eventual corruption and apostasy of the church. We have our many deists and polytheists just as the Romans. Do you not find a familiarity to us and the Romans?

LORD bless
Scott

This review is of a six volume Everyman's edition, which says on its flyleaf first published in 1910 and reprinted in 1960. It has Dawson's introduction and notes along with Gibbon's.

I should say that I read the first three volumes fairly carefully and about half of the fourth, being interested in Justinian and Belisarius but losing interest in the latest adventures of the Goths and Persians. After that I stopped.

It took me several months to read even as much as I did, and I think there were several reasons for this.

1) Gibbon wrote more than two hundred years ago, from a vantage point before the industrial revolution, before modern democracy. Culturally speaking he was far closer to the Roman Empire than we are, and also far less entrenched in the arid rule-of-science mindset than we are today. Nevertheless, living as he did towards the end of the `Age of Reason', his elegant scepticism (not without some devotional aspects) benefited from the earlier influences of the scientific revolution, which allowed him to revere the logic of the classical era and adopt a mixture of piety and scepticism in regard to Christianity.

This viewpoint allows a much fresher take and a much less dry one on Roman history than any modern historian I have read, you can hear him licking his lips as another Emperor rolls into view to be dissected and pinned to his pages.

However this approach takes some getting used to, and to some extent so does the eighteenth century idiom, although that aside Gibbon is highly readable.

2) The other reason Gibbon was slow going for me was that his ideas require a lot of thought and time to absorb. In particular I found what he had to say about the early years of Christianity fascinating. Up until AD300 when Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, what impressed me, despite Gibbon's earnest efforts to downplay unverified stories of martyrdom, was how much the Christians suffered persecution. Not all the time, and not by every Emperor, but for nearly three hundred years they were driven from pillar to post, and if there was a favourable emperor, he was probably only favourable to one sect of the religion. Countless thousands lost their lives, or their livelihoods, or their place of habitation when all they had to do was to deny their faith at a time when they had nothing but their own peers to support them.

Gibbon doesn't really discuss how it was they managed to achieve this however.

What then happened of course, was that after Christianity became accepted, all the energy the Christians had put into survival got turned into fighting each other with incredible ferocity as they argued out the exact status of the holy trinity. Massacres, torture and persecution just as they had suffered from the Romans were now applied to each other, along with endless high level conferences.

Gibbon regards himself as a participant rather than just an observer in this debate, a position quite different I feel to that of any modern historian, but speaking as he does with a constant flow of elegant and not infrequently wicked irony, we are left to infer his views.

I also enjoyed his portrayal of Justinian, Theodora and Belisarius, three amazing characters.

One day I may go back and read the rest, but I think I have enough to think about for a few years!

Upon completing this 3rd Volume, I now stand at the halfway point of Gibbon’s 6 Volume masterpiece. From this vantage point, it’s the late 5th Century, Attila the Hun has invaded, pillaged and conquered the Eastern Empire, and the last Emperor of the crumbling Western Empire, Romulus Augustulus, has made way for Odoacer, the first Barbarian King of Italy.

I grow more fascinated, as I continue this long and detailed history, with just how much material Gibbon imbibed in order to organize and write this work. I’m especially glad my edition contains his footnotes, where he copiously references a wealth of historians from earlier eras --- and doesn’t hesitate to pass judgment on their veracity or their errant speculations.

Some highlights from this portion of the journey:

• The continuous invasions of, battles against, and alliances with, the Goths, Huns, and Vandals.
• The final years and death of Theodosius the Great.
• A detailed account of the final destruction of Paganism in the Empire, as the Christians tore down idols (replacing them with relics of Christian martyrs), statues, and temples, and introduced the worship of saints.
• The final division of the Eastern and Western empires, and the new Western headquarters at Ravenna .
• The valor and leadership of Stilicho.
• A fascinating account of the career of Attila the Hun.

It’s not difficult to see clear parallels with modern times: for instance, during the 5th Century, the Empire’s military became weaker, along with the borders of the Empire. What followed were numerous invasions of barbarians, and the sacking of Rome by the Goths.

See you at the end of Volume 4!

At the same time the founding fathers were putting the finishing touches on the American constitution, Edward Gibbon was publishing the original six volumes of his history.

And just as the American constitution achieved its long lasting durability through its capitalization on and recognition of the Hobbesian quality of human nature, so too Gibbon used his six volumes to describe in intricate detail the minute facets of that human nature as it related to the falling of the Roman Empire.

Be clear, other warnings concerning the impenetrable nature of Gibbons' writing are not without merit. That being said, like climbing a mighty mountain there's an inherent desireability in perservering through Gibbons' opaque prose.

Like Thoreau's Walden, Gibbons text also provides occassional thought provoking gems like when he was discussing the prevelance of Greek and Roman mythology prior to the rise of Christianity as being "equally true to the masses, equally false to the philosophers and equally useful to the magistrates."

However in the main, reading Gibbon is like listening to a wise old uncle as he laboriously repeats the contents of his memory. And stored within Gibbon's memory we find not only recognizable nuggets of Suetonious and Josephus and Tacitus but also the type of comparison and contemplation that are the obvious products of long consideration.

So reading this book is not only reading the paramount history but its also the reception of one of the west's greatest cultural artifacts rightly bracketed with Dante and Shakespeare and Newton and Darwin.

This work not only covers the history of Rome from 1 AD to 1453 AD, but also the history of the Middle East and Central Asia, including the Islamic and Mongolian conquests. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find a more detailed history on the spread of Islam, from its beginnings with the life of Muhammad to its triumph over the Byzantine Empire, the last remnant of Rome. It covers all nations that were conquered by the 'Saracens' and the internal intrigue between the various Muslim dynasties. Many interesting descriptions are included, such as the colors and designs of the royal standards. And, there are a lot facts that aren't well-known. For instance, did you know that the chapters of the Koran were first written on palm leaves and mutton bones by his followers (in no particular order), and stored in a chest at Muhammad's home? It wasn't until two years after Muhammad's death that the writings were recovered by Abu Bakr and published. Cool, eh?

This book was and still is a masterwork, highly detailed and very readable. By modern standards the author interjects his personal opinions far too often, and it is very noticeable. Gibbons' basic premise/thesis (basically, that the huge number of barbarians living within the empire made the empire as a whole "less Roman" in character and this caused the militaristic, nationalistic, and cultural society to gradually crumble) has been challenged and, if not discredited, made it at least not the "definitive answer" as it might have been at one time. Still, an excellent book, and seeing it on someone's shelf makes for an instant conversation piece.

The previous reviewer, Mr. Pille [now "WTA," I see], huffs and puffs as is his wont but, as is often the case, he is dead on target with regard to Gibbon's "Decline and Fall."

Skimming through the the store reviews provides a fascinating view of the demotic response to a great classic work in the early Twenty-first Century. Perhaps the most depressing of the bunch is the reviewer who writes, "You will not gain anything from the content of the book other than the chrnological [sic] linking of facts and entertaining stories. Second, this work is really really L O N G. If you are looking for a narrative history of the Roman Empire for the entertainment value, look elsewhere." Those words are so wrong in so many ways. Clearly the poor devil who wrote them, like so many others of our age, has been infected with the peculiar notion that the point of writing is to impart facts efficiently and the point of reading is to confirm your own beliefs. Sad ... oh, sad.

Many reviewers look askance at Gibbon's view of history. Well, that is certainly not new. Some suggest other books with other views. It is well and good that they should do so. There have been many books published and many views expressed on the fall of the Romans (and of other empires) in the 217 years since the final volume of the "Decline and Fall" came off the presses, but Gibbon is still here. If some of those other books are still held in high regard 217 years from now, I hope that someone will come forward to defend them as classics, too.

First one thing: do not, on any account, get the abridged version. If I could take one book to a desert island, it would be this one. That's because it is extremely long, and every word of it is worth it.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire remains as relevant as ever. And this is in spite of its hugely ambitious scope, treating of the history of the Roman and Byzantine empires (both considered Roman by Gibbon) from the end of the 1st century AD to the 15th. Gibbon is a modern historian. He is shrewdly selective of his sources, judiciously reserved, and coldly analytical. He differentiates between proximate and ultimate causes. He has a humanistic but impartial point of view. At the same time, he is an 18th century Englishman. While this is reflected in some of his opinions, such as that the extinction of republican freedom was what determined Rome's decline, it makes them no less valid and often the more interesting; it is hard to imagine anyone today being able to treat the early Christian controversies with the same tact and humour, for example.

And Edward Gibbon wrote like an enchanter. I read somewhere that his style was an inspiration to Churchill. No wonder. Every line of this tome of perhaps a million words is a delight to read. You will laugh out loud. His thought is clear and convincing. And there are simply magical moments, such as when he produces that mythical animal that appeared in the Roman circus, an animal no one in Europe has seen since then... a giraffe. Or the dissertation on whether Europe remains at threat of invasion from the Mongols.

The Decline and Fall is full of telling anecdotes, and yet it always holds to a general picture. It is filled with detail and colour but never loses the reader. It is packed with events, and it offers discussion of longer trends - notably those that participated in Rome's decline and led to its eventual fall - political, religious, military, economic. And it is even more impressive when one thinks of the modern tools its author did not have at his disposal, in particular archaeological and numismatic. Approximately half of the book is dedicated to the Roman Empire proper, up to the late 5th century. This is where Gibbon is at his strongest, his research the most thorough. The rest deals with Byzantium, touching heavily on European history up to the fall of Constantinople, and has a broader sweep. His work ends with a description of Rome as it looks today (i.e. in the late 18th century).

I finished reading my copy (after several happy months) in Rome itself, in a little place with a view of the Pantheon. If you have the luck of being able to do that, you will never forget it.

Gibbon was a genius. He spent practically his entire lifetime writing and researching this book. The mere scope of his survey is astounding, extending from the splendor of the Antonine age to the decadence of Rome in the seventeenth century. This is not only a work about the Roman Empire, but also about Europe and the Catholic Church. It stands as the legacy of a brilliant mind, no doubt one of the great accomplishments of European Literature.

What Gibbon is writing about is the destruction of the classical world, and its replacement by a more authoritarian feudal society. This was a brutal process because it meant destroying an entire civilization. People enjoyed a high degree of social mobility in the classical world. But by the time of the Middle Ages, most of the population were slaves. The Church, in Gibbon's view, was the principal culprit in this upheaval. For this reason, "Decline and Fall" was banned in several countries when it was published.

Gibbon is often called the first "modern" historian, due to his extensive use of primary sources and rigorous methodology. Many of his footnotes contain amusing anecdotes and trivial details. His writing style is elaborate, and he can seriously upgrade your vocabulary! Ironically, most classical scholars today dismiss him as unreliable because he influenced romantic portrayals of classical antiquity. This is a fair criticism; nevertheless, no work of modern scholarship has surpassed Gibbon's masterpiece to date.

Womersley's edition is very well-organized and arranges the narrative's historical chronology as follows:

Volume 1 - covers the Antonine period down to the end of the fourth century. It includes the controversial chapters on the birth of the Church and examines the transition from paganism to Christianity under Constantine and Julian.

Volume 2 - covers the barbarian invasions (including tribes, their leaders and kingdoms), the division of the Roman Empire and subsequent fall of its western half, and the resurgence of Byzantium during the reign of Justinian.

Volume 3 - covers the rise of Islam, the gradual decadence of Byzantium, the Great Schism of the Church, the Norman invasions, the Seljuk Turks, the Crusades, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, the Ottomans and the fall of Constantinople. It also offers an overview of the medieval papacy, a history of Rome up to the seventeenth century, and the author's conclusions to the entire work.

All history enthusiasts should cherish Gibbon's study. His work displays an unrivaled mastery of its subject, and is written in the graceful prose of a bygone era. Along with Theodore Mommsen's "History of Rome" (which covers the rise of Rome and serves as a useful counterpart), Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" is the all-time modern classic of Roman history.

For those with as much interest in the English language as in Roman history, Gibbon is one of the greatest stylists who ever lived. Moreover, his dramatic sense is manifest not only in the events he describes,but also in the very sentences he uses to describe them.

I wonder what he would think of the language of the internet.

Bless the internet for making Gibbon available for everybody; and Gibbon for making great language available on the internet!

There are few other words which better describe Gibbon's sprawling masterpiece, starting in the Augustan Age of the Early Empire and Climaxing nearly 1400 years later with a vivid description of the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, Gibbon's work will most likely never be eclipsed. Recent historians chide Gibbon for his poetic style and "non-objective" view point, but I rather say that those are the same reasons that make his definitive work stand above all others. Gibbon's provides not only a richly detailed history, full of intrigues and good story telling, by also relates the attitudes in the governing and the governed at each period of time, telling as much a tale of history as one of declining values and a slide from the pinnacle of rome power to a morass of decadence and selfishness that tears the empire apart in the years to come. Gibbon does not shy from calling wrong wrong and right right, much in the tradition of greek moralist historians that came before him, and it his strong viewpoint and this undercurrent of the loss of the roman and moral self that allows him to so sucessfully tie this epic together. This is a long book, so don't go into it lightly, but it is certainly rewarding. I thoroughly enjoyed this so much, that I plan to reread it again in the future, which for me is an astounding occurence. I also realise I am not reading the original, as much of Gibbon's work on the later Empire is marred by inaccuracies, but still at nearly a thousand pages, it is still a dense tome. In all my readings, I have never come across so impressive a text as this one, and don't believe I shall again.

this book is a masterpiece. it really goes beyond any history book you will ever read in school or in university for that matter (most people will go through their lives without having read this). gibbon's work does not simply go through the roman empire, as it is commonly perceived. he extends the time line and expounds on the founding of the early, christian church through the crusades (worth the price of admission alone). to top things off, gibbon does not neglect the influence of the jews and the muslim invasion of europe which lasted for about 700 years. in fact, about one third of this work covers the islamic conquest of the west and the response by christian europe (the crusades). there are other books you can read in isolation about each sub-section of this work. but if you want a sweeping overview of the west (not simply 'rome'), there is no better starting point than gibbon's decline and fall. i would go so far as to say that anyone who was not touched this book is not fully educated.

The quite voluminous "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" is one of the most important books of all times, and is of special interest to the reader who wants to go the extra mile in search of the reasons why the Empire collapsed after almost 1.000 years of existence. Is also a good reminder to everyone of us that, no matter what, all things pass and one world leader is followed by another in a sequence of falling cards. The book, first publishe in 1776, the same year that the "Wealth of the Nations" was published, and the same year the United States declared its independency, is one of the first serious attempts to relate history in a context of sequenced facts where social, political and cultural movements were much more important than the play of personalities. Edward Gibbon lived in Geneva many years and was familiar with the most important intelectual developments of the age, being acquainted with Voltaire and his ideas, reading and writting in many languages but mainly in French. The bibliography he consulted is extensive and, even some 15 centuries after the facts he reports, his is one of the most comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the reasons behind the fall of Rome.
To begin with, he does not list how it all began, that is, it is not his purpose to narrate how the Empire was built. He begins with the Empire as a "fait accompli", with a narrative in the rule of Julius Cesar , the philosopher ruler, and analises with endless detail all the rationale of lack of in each and every ruler's mind, the background of his ascent and the reasons behind the fall of each one of them. The vast majority of Rome's ruler was killed by people who was akin or intimate to the ruler or by members of the Praetorian guard. Also, all the meanings of the empire's hierarchy is explained with a lot of detail, what was the function of a Caesar, what meant to be a senator at the time of Rome apogee, of consulship, etc... Each one of the 3 books, totalling some 2.000 pages, has a very interesting map of Europe, Africa and Asia at the time. A lot of factual information is there to astound the reader with the polyhistoric knowledge of the author. His privileged mind does not permit him to understand that not all the readers speak the languages he does and the text is full of footnotes quotations in Latin and ancient Greek, with no translation whatsoever.
The portrait of the barbarians kings and people is superb and the reader has the opportunity of a face to face contact with Allaric, the king of the Goths, and with Atilla, the king of the Huns. Sure, this trilogy is only focused in the so-called West Empire and its sequel is totally devoted to the East empire, but that is another story.

This work has often been called, and rightly I believe, the most significant historical text ever written in the English language. Even in abridged form this work is spectacular, but as a whole this treatise on the fall of Rome is nothing short of monumental. In fact, the whole work covers a period of history not only concerning the fall of the Roman Empire, but also some ten centuries after the barbarian invasion of Rome, encompassing not only the events which led to the ruin of the empire but also every significant occurrence concerning the land, people, or allies of the fallen kingdom. Gibbon easily could have ended his history with the fall of the western empire, but instead he chose to continue a work to which he dedicated a great portion of his life, and for which the world will be forever in his debt.

Because the work spans such a large portion of civilized European history, it is fairly easy to abridge. The most important information concerning the decline of the center of civilization can be condensed into one rather large volume, and the rest (concerning Huns, Saracens, and the like) can be summed up in a matter of pages.
The abridgement is concise in many ways, yet severely wanting in others. As is always the case with an abridgement of a great work, much that is valuable has been spliced and omitted. Despite the problems with this abridgement, however, this work is a great joy to read. More importantly, it is packed with pertinent information about the fall of the Roman empire. If one of the ultimate goals of history is to learn from the past, there is much we can learn from Gibbon's work.

This book would be worth every penny if purchased solely for David Womersley's introduction. The introduction is written so beautifully that it effortlessly carries the reader through every facet of the life of Edward Gibbon. I intended but to scan only a few pages of the introduction. Candidly, I expected it to be at best irrelevant and at worst tiresome. I was struck at once by how thoroughly Gibbon's life was recounted. My imagination was launched into flights of fancy at the sharp contrasts between Gibbon's classic European education and my decidedly less useful American public indoctrination. Gibbon spent time with major philosophers and these interactions helped to shape an intellect that was uniquely able to see 'truth', especially through religious dogma. The introduction provides the reader with invaluable insight and, dare I say, a device that may grant the reader a greater understanding and likely a greater appreciation of this classic work. Womersley has wisely chosen to abridge only the number of chapters while not `blending' chapters. Womersley explains that the beauty of Gibbon's writing is best viewed in the arc of a complete chapter and therefore 'blending chapters' would be a horrible injustice. I liken Gibbon's writing to that of a non-fictional Shakespeare. Shakespeare helped us see truth in fictional stories as Gibbon does so in a non-fictional format. This is THE book to buy about the Roman Empire. Bravo - Sir Womersley!

Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) was an English historian and Member of Parliament. The other volumes in this series are The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II: 395 A.D. -- 1185 A.D. and THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE - VOLUME III - 1185 A.D. - 1453 A.D..

He wrote, "Fear has been the original parent of superstition, and every new calamity urges trembling mortals to deprecate the wrath of their invisible enemies." (Pg. 258) He argues, "From the first of the fathers to the last of the popes, a succession of bishops, of saints, or martyrs, and of miracles, is continued without interruption... And yet, since every friend to revelation is persuaded of the reality, and every reasonable man is convinced of the cessation, of miraculous powers, it is evident that there must have been SOME PERIOD in which they were either suddenly or gradually withdrawn from the Christian church." (Pg. 409)

He famously suggests, "what were the secondary causes of the rapid growth of the Christian church?... I. The inflexible, and... intolerant zeal of the Christians... II. The doctrine of a future life... III. The miraculous powers ascribed to the primitive church. IV. The pure and austere morals of the Christians. V. The union and discipline of the Christian republic, which gradually formed an independent and increasing state in the heart of the Roman empire." (Pg. 383) He admits, "The pagans, who were actuated by a sense of humanity... acknowledged the benevolence of the new sect (Christianity)... great numbers of infants who, according to the inhuman practice of the times, had been exposed by their parents, were frequently rescued from death, baptised, educated, and maintained by the piety of the Christians, and at the expense of the public treasure." (Pg. 427)

He records, "it must be allowed that the number of Protestants who were executed in a single province and a single reign far exceeded that of the primitive martyrs in the space of three centuries and of the Roman empire." (Pg. 504) About Constantine, he suggests, "The mind of Constantine might fluctuate between the Pagan and the Christian religions... he might acknowledge the God of the Christians as ONE of the MANY deities who compose the hierarchy of heaven. Or perhaps he might embrace the philosophic and pleasing idea that... all the sects and all the nations of mankind are united in the worship of the common Father and Creator of the universe." (Pg. 639)

He comments, "The passionate desire of contemplating the original monuments of their redemption attracted to Jerusalem a successive crowd of pilgrims ... The zeal, perhaps the avarice, of the clergy of Jerusalem cherished and multiplied these beneficial visits. They fixed, by unquestionable tradition, the scene of each memorable event. They exhibited the instruments which had been used in the passion of Christ... above all, they showed the cross on which he suffered... Such miracles as seemed necessary to account for its extraordinary preservation and seasonable discovery were gradually propagated without opposition... (the bishop) alone might gratify the curious devotion of the pilgrims by the gift of small pieces... it was found convenient to supposed that the marvellous wood possessed a secret power of vegetation, and that its substance, though continually diminished, still remained entire and unimpaired." (Pg. 777-778)

Gibbon's work is essential reading as history, as philosophy, and as literature.

At long last I have tackled one of the great achievements of the English language, and I am glad that I dedicated the time and effort to do so. I have no regrets about investing in the unabridged version, anymore than I would want to watch a two-hour TV program that hacks and condenses and combines the first two Godfather movies into a bowdlerized shell of its former self. Some works must be enjoyed in their entirety, as they were originally created, and this is one of them. Not that I should be comparing one of the crowning achievements of Western culture to a few hours of celluloid produced in Hollywood - that's like comparing Mozart to say, the Beatles - but it was just to make a point. Read the unabridged version, or don't read it all. (And BTW, no knock on the Beatles, who were great, but comparing them to Mozart? I don't think so...)

I suppose the first thing I should point out to potential buyers is to make sure that you buy the complete set of books. Gibbon's magnum opus has been published in so many different ways - I've seen the unabridged version in anywhere from three to seven volumes - that you need to be careful. This version has all of Gibbon's footnotes, which serve two purposes. First - you can get additional insight (and sometimes witty/snarky asides) to the narrative, and second - you get to see just how authoritative and reputable a source Gibbon is - he completely and fully researched all available writings and histories - ancient, medieval, and contemporary - in preparing his text. This work is one of the gold standard sources for historical information - if Gibbon reports an incident or fact in this work - you can bet good money that it is probably true.

The language is majestic, the style fluid and articulate. I think you need to have some prior knowledge of Roman and medieval history before delving into this modest little tome, and it is useful to have another good history book handy to check dates, as Gibbon is not good about telling you what year or years he is discussing as he proceeds through chapters that, at times, span centuries. Perhaps, in his day, people were more educated, and it was okay for him to assume that his reader would know what time frame he was talking about when he mentioned an obscure Greek Emperor. For my part, I kept copies of Volumes III and IV of Will Durant's "Story of Civilization" handy as I worked my way through the different volumes (over the course of nearly a year), and that helped me better grasp the material. I think what sets this book apart is the obvious wisdom and intelligence that is communicated "between the lines" and which shines through virtually every page. Gibbon seems to patiently explain why the events he describes were still relevant in his day, when the British Empire was approaching its zenith; and that of course is why the book remains relevant today - as the American "Empire" perhaps begins its inevitable decline, like all great powers must do, sooner or later.

The best way I can summarize how impressed I was with this work is to say that I may well have to read it again someday before I die - this book is that extraordinary, and that worth the time invested. Read and ponder this book, and you will begin to understand history like never before.

Modern historians have at their disposal the findings of disciplines such as epigraphy, papyrology, and numismatics, which enable them to chart the course of events more accurately than Gibbon could. In his day, these sciences were in their infancy, and with rare exceptions he depended on the primary works of the ancient historians, who themselves were prone to error and bias. Thus, it is possible today to write a history of the Roman Empire that is significantly more accurate than Gibbon's. All of this is largely beside the point, as Gibbon is a giant upon whose shoulders the pygmies stand. I think it quite probable that he is the greatest writer of non-fiction English prose to ever live (I'll accept arguments on Churchill). He also had an incredible feel for the sweep and grandeur of his subject, and a passionate involvement with his material that is sadly lacking in many works of history (a refreshing recent exception is the ringing defense of Stilicho in "Theodosius: the Empire at Bay," by Williams and Friell). "The Decline and Fall" is one of the greatest works of history and one of the greatest works of literature. It is also an incredibly penetrating analysis of human actions and motivations by a first-rate mind.

Edward Gibbon has set the stage on which hundreds of other successful writers show history, and on which thousands of teachers tell history. From the Age of the Antonines to the reign of the Vandals, Gibbon explains to us just how the government of Rome faltered in a well-balanced tale, measuring external and internal factors.
Gibbon grades Marcus Aerilius Antoninus's successors using the last of the Great Roman Emperors as the benchmark. Each emperor thereafter is respectively a degree away from Marcus Aerilius in ethics, morals and values. Guards, friends or family readily dispatch those that live as the model good citizen. The author, however, keeps his hope in finding a hero. He includes the Empire's adversaries, such as Attila and Alaric in describing wanton virtues for a good ruler.
Written two hundred years ago, the language is far from contemporary. But, if you are serious about learning Western History and Culture, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a must read. Make the commitment and read Volumes 1, 2 and 3. From there, you will gain a better understanding when reading other epics on history, such as The Discoverers by Daniel Boorstin.
More importantly, you may say that you have successfully walked with Gibbon through nearly 500 years of history!

Gibbon's great work was published in the late 18th century. Don't read it looking for a contemporary style "historical analysis." Read it for its timeless wisdom and beauty, for which there is no parallel. Today's college history text is to Gibbon as the latest Spice Girls album is to Mozart.

Winston Churchill was largely self-educated, and he wrote that Gibbon loomed large in his reading during his early 20's. Read Gibbon; then read Churchill's famous war speeches. Notice the cadence, and consider why Churchill's Nobel prize was awarded for his oratory.

Ah, Sunday morning, a pot of coffee, and Gibbon! You can obtain Gibbon's history in many different editions new and old, cheap paperbacks and pricy collectors versions. Just get one, preferably unabridged, and enjoy.

edited by Hans-Fredrich Mueller

I finally finished this massive treasure, which isn't even exhaustive. And I can't imagine the colossal task in both time and energy it took to write it. It took Gibbon twelve years, from 1776 to 1788. I find it more than a coincidence that he began writing in the year of our independence. Even in this abridged form (which is what you will more likely come across) it is still a huge undertaking; though Mueller, in his critical forward, tells us it is necessary for it to become readable. Mueller also says he prided himself in being meticulous and accurate while still being manageable. And very helpful is the addition of dates bracketed throughout the text. An index would have been useful. In Boorstin's introduction he cites the major impact this work had on him; he calls it intimate. I would have never thought of it in that way, but now after ingesting all six volumes I understand why he calls it intimate. Gibbon does not mince words either. His work will always be remembered and its impact can still be felt today. He is an artist, like no one I have read before. Keep a dictionary handy. I also recommend reading the forward and the introduction, especially after studying Gibbon's great work. They take into question Gibbon's devotion to Christianity and his offensiveness towards it. I see Gibbon as mixed in his beliefs, though he wrote as he saw it; and I find that he saw the truth when he found it. Did he believe infrastructure was valued over its people?

The role of emperor was not a secure job. "Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same." The polytheistic Roman Empire was very much a melting pot (half slaves) and within it were many schisms. I see parallels---such as the oppressive taxes, the corrupt politicians, the tyrannical government, the effemination, and the endless warfare---to our United States, and a warning for our future.

So what caused the fall? For Gibbon, the gradual decline began after Christ, until the eventual fall some fifteen hundred years later. Chapters are built upon the reigns of the emperors as they came to power, except where he periodically inserts chapters concerning the Christian influence, the Christian persecutions, the corrupt church, the persecution of the church toward others, the Crusades, the rise of Islam, the debilitating taxes and, towards the end, he concentrates on the impact by the surrounding nations. The Empire became a black hole and split to form an East and a West---the West to totally collapse. There were many causes: the slow introduction of Christianity over Paganism and the conversion to it, the collapse of the military, the always and increasing threat of outside peoples, alienating allies and provoking enemies, the corruption within (the people), and of course the self righteous emperors. Entropy would take over and finally lead to the collapse of the infrastructure.

Rome was both a curse and a blessing for Christianity. Many were converted, but the power of Catholicism and the Pope led to the eventual corruption and apostasy of the church. We have our many deists and polytheists just as the Romans. Do you not find a familiarity to us and the Romans?

LORD bless
Scott

I was hoping to find some insights regarding the threats to western or modern civilization today. I learned that powerful leaders are irrational, short-sighted and self-interested. I learned that religious organizations and leaders are the same as political and military leaders. I didn't learn much about why Roman institutions worked or didn't work. This is a long and long-winded work, not worth even half the time of reading it.

Hoping Mr. Gibbon’s sources were the best available to him, this is a delightful and enlightening work. Recommended for anybody wanting to go deeper in their knowledge about the last ‘moments’ of the Roman Empire. The very last chapters are of particular value for anybody interested in the relevance of Christianity during this period.

In physical terms this is a beautiful hardback set that is affordable. It takes pride of place in my personal library although I do occasionally view antiquarian bookshops on the internet and would like to one day purchase a nice leather bound 18th or 19th century set of volumes. Gibbon's original volumes appeared between 1776 and 1788 so it took him great time and effort to produce this work and no wonder! It was a mammoth undertaking and there's no doubt he achieved in literary terms an epic masterpiece that is unrivalled not only in this genre but in any. The work is obviously an important historical one but Gibbon has a wonderful way of telling a story with a range that is sometimes philosophic and at times humorous. There is a terrific supply of footnotes throughout and this edition is the best modern one available.

The fact that Edward Gibbon had a sense of humour is forgotton these days. His work is remembered mostly as the proverbial "dry tome" by those who haven't read it. I tell you, that impression just ain't true! After you soak up Gibbon, you'll get frustrated by the colourless prose of most modern historians, or anyone for that matter.
He has a rich sense of narrative that only a few modern historians can match. The reader is transported from the end of the ancient world to the beginning of the modern.(His work, almost grudgingly, takes in the Byzantine Empire up to 1453) As a stylist, his language is unique. The work is worth reading for that alone. I mentioned his humour, which is wickedly ironic and beautifully refined at the same time. You probably won't laugh out loud, but you will be seduced by it. His contempories, especially the stuffy ones, were shocked by his tone, even while they admitted his erudition. His attitude toward Christianity particularly raised the heckles of the establishment. His character sketches are a delight and for those who like action, there's plenty of great battle scenes and palace coups.
Don't be put off by the length of the work. It's worth reading selectively. And it does have its weak points. He didn't like Byzantium at all, for example, and gives a totally misleading impression of that great empire. Also, his "General Impressions on the Fall of the Western Empire" while picturesque, doesn't really make much sense.
Gibbon wasn't sure why, exactly, the Empire fell. Don't expect to be enlightened on that point. He gives lots of theories, but something tells me he wasn't convinced by any of them himself. He was too good an historian to believe we can fully understand that kind of thing.
The cool thing about E. Gibbon is that he remains a maverick. He didn't found a school of thought and certainly didn't follow one. Trying to fit him in a neat hole is pointless. From our perspective, however, his views on "Civilisation" are quite ! smug. He wrote at a time when contempories imagined Europe had only just reached a point higher than that reached by classical civilisation, he imagined the community of European states could never again fall from grace in the same way. We know different.
My advice: Read an edition that has all the footnotes intact. The joy is in the details.

This work was merely the abridged version (the actual version is 3000 pages long), but Gibbon's command and use of the English language is so rich and varied that one must take the time necessary to savor and fully digest his arguments. Besides, at nearly 800 pages, this isn't light reading.
Editor David Womersley did a masterful job with the editing. In situations where chapters of the abridged version were truncated, Womersley still favored the reader with a description of Gibbon's arguments, as well as with commentary on why/how Gibbon's observations were of consequence. Additionally, Womersley's introduction is well worth one's time--he is able to give us an accurate and fascinating portrait of Gibbon, which enables us to better understand and appreciate the nature of Gibbon's arguments.
Of course, the best part about the book is Gibbon's own observations regarding the history of Rome. Gibbon was a masterful and witty commentator--oftentimes issuing backhanded insults and wryly discussing certain historical personages. Even the footnotes are filled with such commentary. Consider one footnote where Gibbon said "The Dissertation of M. Biet seems to have been justly preferred to the discourse of his more celebrated competitor, the Abbé le Boeuf, an antiquarian, whose name was happily expressive of his talents." Of the emperor Gordian, Gibbon remarked that both his gigantic collection of books, and his impressive collection of concubines were "for use rather than ostentation." Who could help but be charmed by this cheeky and mildly scandalous commentary?
But beyond dry wit and well-placed insults, Gibbon's work stands out because it is so relevant to our world today. The collapse of empire is a subject of much debate in the United States--what with various commentators and pundits assuring us that we will go the way of the Romans quite soon. Gibbon tells us what the crumbling of an empire really is and what it means--in sumptuous detail. In discussing the empire of the Romans, Gibbon lends perspective to geopolitical arguments of today. We can use his analysis as a starting point--the definitive discussion on how a world power may reach its nadir, and may ultimately see its power dissipate.
At times, Gibbon's attention to historical detail is eerie in its ability to pick out important and consequential subjects for discussion. In analyzing the rise of Islam, Gibbon remarks upon the rewards that await the faithful Muslim: "Seventy-two Houris, or black-eyed girls, of resplendent beauty, blooming youth, virgin purity, and exquisite sensibility, will be created for the use of the meanest believer; a moment of pleasure will be prolonged to a thousand years, and his faculties will be encreased a hundred fold, to render him worthy of his felicity." Tell me that you don't read that passage without a shiver running down your spine. Over two hundred years before the attacks of September 11th, Gibbon identified and remarked on the mythology that would drive madmen to plot and execute that mad deed.
Equally impressive was Gibbon's complete and absolute mastery of allegory and analogy. His use of the story of the "Seven Sleepers" to describe the human advancement "from youth to age, without observing the gradual, but incessant, change of human affairs," is a shining example, as Womersley points out, of "human insight, historical vision and philosophical reach" that confirm Gibbon's "range and power as a historian." A relation of the history of the Paulician sect would have struck other lesser historians as tedious and unnecessary, but Gibbon--who was no lesser historian--undertook an analysis of the history with excellent results--making clearer to the reader the nature of religious culture in Gibbon's own time.
Like any work devised by the human hand, the book does have characteristics that receive criticism. Throughout The Decline and Fall Gibbon takes shots at the Persians--a sore spot with me, personally. One bit appears to occur when Gibbon discusses Sultan Mahomet [Mohammad] II of the Ottoman Empire. Remarking on the fact that Mohammad II "spoke or understood five languages, the Arabic, the Persian, the Chalaean or Hebrew, the Latin and the Greek," Gibbon goes on to say that "The Persian might indeed contribute to [Mohammad's] amusement, and the Arabic to his edification." Needless to say, this is a slam against the Persian language--one of the most beautiful and lyrical tongues in existence, and a language that is perfectly suited to poetry--as Hafez, Rum'i, Sa'adi and Omar Khayyam would attest to, and do attest to by their eternally magnificent poetry. Gibbon also has his favorite figures. He openly roots for the Romans, under Emperor Julian, to vanquish the Persian Empire by force of arms, and laments the fact that the Romans lost their holdings in Persia thanks to the death of Julian, and the incompetence of the Emperor Jovian--Julian's successor. Indeed, Gibbon goes so far as to say that "Julian, on this occasion, shewed himself ignorant, or careless, of the laws of civility, which the prudence and refinement of polished ages have established between hostile princes. Yet these wanton ravages need not excite in our [heart] any vehement emotions of pity or resentment. A simple, naked, statute, finished by the hands of a Grecian artist, is of more genuine value than all these rude and costly monuments of Barbaric labor: and if we are more deeply affected by the ruin of a palace, than by the conflagration of a cottage, our humanity must have formed a very erroneous estimate of the miseries of human life." Additionally, Gibbon tells us that "The native race of Persians is small and ugly: but it has been improved by the perpetual mix of Circassian blood." Maybe it's just because my ethnicity is Persian, but I found these remarks wholly unnecessary.
Additionally, Gibbon lionizes Mohammad II, Julian, the Byzantine general Belisarius, and others--lending such favoritism at times that one cannot help but wonder whether his analysis is sufficiently dispassionate. And despite the fact that Gibbon was a believing Christian, Gibbon does show a hostility to religion that is characteristic of a man of the Enlightenment, but one that stands out nonetheless, and could very well have colored his analysis. I suppose that "The Decline and Fall" wouldn't be the same if this opinionated commentary was omitted, and overall, I did rather enjoy having the opportunity to gain an insight into Gibbon's own feelings and beliefs, but the reader should be warned that Gibbon's history is not exactly objective in nature.
In the end, however, these are trifling concerns. I haven't created anything like a Top Ten List of Favorite Books, but when I do, Gibbon's magnum opus will surely be included, and will have a place of honor. In remarking on the success of "The Decline and Fall," Gibbon stated that "my book was on every table, and almost on every toilette." I would not be in the least bit surprised if this were so, and few works in history would deserve similar popularity and acclaim. Given Gibbon's masterful historical relation, given his erudition and expert use of the English language and the contribution he made to the language through his work, and given the relevance of "The Decline and Fall" to our present day and age, let us hope for the sake of contemporary intelligence and society, that more tables and toilettes are graced with a copy of this magisterial work. More importantly, let us hope that Gibbon is read faithfully and constantly--like a Bible of the Enlightenment whose discussion of the past could very well serve to illuminate the present and the future, and offer guidance to meeting the challenges posed to us by modern day events.

History made interesting. Gibbon writes well, thinks well, and presents well. Roman history is intensely interesting and yet so many Roman history books are intolerable. Additonally, the mind-numbing Roman histories in text books, spend most of their time quoting Gibbon.

Moses Hadas has done an excellent job in condensing Gibbon's masterpiece into a portable reader. Though far shorter than the original work that runs into thousands of pages, it succeeds in giving the reader a broad sense of the Decline and Fall, without bogging him down with extraneous details.

After completing this book, I was so intrigued that I bought the full 3-volume Penguin unabridged edition. Up to now, years later, I have only read about three-quarters of the first volume, and I do not expect to complete it anytime soon. It is obviously not that the unabridged version is bad, but that it is meant for a scholarly audience, and thus contains many chapters which are boring for the casual reader, such as a painfully detailed description of the Empire's finances. This abridged version omits all those parts, and leaves the reader with a compelling and coherent narrative of the process of corruption that destroyed arguably the greatest civilisation in the history of Mankind.

I recommend without reservation this book to anyone with an interest in the history of past civilisations.

Gibbon must be taken in the context of his time - his writing style, his prejudices, and his occasional lapse into sermonizing. His style is to say in 30-words what others would say in less than 10. His prejudices are many but one that seems to permeate most is the over-emphasis on the western empire at the expense of the east. It is as if the eastern empire did not survive another millennia after the fall of the west. But given difficult reading and language constructs and the slanted views, a greater work on the subject of the western empire probably does not exist. It is an essential though somewhat distasteful standard for anyone interested in Roman history. As yet, there is nothing comparable in scope for the western empire. For a balanced and more readable coverage of the east, I would highly recommend supplementing with the works of John Julius Norwich such as the three part history beginning with Byzantium: The Early Centuries. In addition, it would be good to supplement your study with Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 (Story of Civilization, No 3).

It's a literary work of art. Gibbon's style of narration is breathtaking. On every page he comes out as the true scholar that he really is. His choice of words and his style of sentence construction is consummate on every level.

Other than that, the whole account is Gibbon's perspective of the Roman Empire on a strict level. While most will concur with him on the insanity of the likes of say, Caligula, Nero; or the politically cunning inclinations of Augustus, his treatment of Christianity is open to debate. Gibbon places Christianity at the top in his list of the factors that could possibly have accelerated the empire towards decadence and its ultimate disintegration. Though this can be true on some accounts, he offers no clear explanation on how the Eastern empire could have carried on for more centuries with the religion at its very centre. It's an unwritten edict that the Byzantines were more passionate about Jesus than Western christendom.

Also, in some pages, Gibbon argues that the Roman emperors, say Marcus Aurelius for example, never really would have had an inclination towards persecuting christians on grounds of political gains. For Gibbon argues that the political elite of Rome were well aware of the fact that some kind of religion maintained social order. But his arguments are at considerable, if not complete, loggerheads with the several accounts from other historians that Rome continued to persecute Christianity until Constantine.

Persecution of Christianity might necessarily not have completely been primary disdain for the christian concept which totally conflicts with the Roman edicts of deifying dead emperors. Christianity came in handy for rogue emperors to have this sect of minorities scapegoated for their own excesses (remember Nero's fire?) or to appease the minds of a disgruntled majority which preferred to suspect them.

Finally, his stand that the "whole" empire prospered and preferred Roman rule in the age of the five good emperors is open to debate. Pax Romana might have worked for the Italian mainland at best, but not necessarily in provinces even as close as, say, Gaul.

Edward Gibbon's masterpiece is not only the finest work of history in the English language, it is also one of its greatest narratives.
No writer can fail to learn from how Gibbon used his incredible command of sources and texts to fashion his work; no student of the classic world can fail to learn from Gibbon's wealth of detail; no educated person can fail to learn from his depiction of the corruption and collapse of a once-mighty empire.
Modern historians pooh-pooh Gibbon's "bias" and "slant" and insinuate that the mighty world of professional academic history "gets" the subject in a way Gibbon did not. Gibbon was a man, of course, and his word is not final. Yet the difference is that while historians today are blind to their own equally crippling prejudices, Gibbon wears his ones on his sleeve and nevertheless dares his detractors to doubt his erudition and achievement. They are pedants, but he is the Master.
I find it interesting that while Gibbon had no formal training in history whatsoever, men and women today must spend close to a decade labouring over some insignificant point in the record to become a "real" historian. A telling point.

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is undoubtedly one of the best works of narrative history, if not the best. It spares absolutley no facts, giving an absolutley complete chronology of the Roman Empire from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople. Gibbon writes in a prose style, which appeals to some but had often been the subject of criticism to others. This style makes it somewhat difficult to read, and also more time consuming, especially factoring the massive length of the set (This particular set of Volumes 1-3 is only half of the total publication) make it difficult to read quickly, I took nearly 10 months of reading it from time to time to finish it.

Undoubtedly, reading this takes a great amount of patience and dedication, though often, Gibbon will interject chapters or comments into the narrative work dealing with analysis of certain events, most infamously, the rise of Christianity, which Gibbon writes of very negativley, equating it together with the growth of barbarism. Gibbon's view of Christianity is undoubtedly very hostile, even going as far as to partially blame it for the fall of Rome, this subjective view is also demonstrated when he discusses the Sassanian empire, openly speaking positivley of the Emperor Julian's war with the Persian king Shapur II, referring to the Persians as barbarians when they were in fact, perhaps the only civilzed society which Rome bordered. While this is not a good example of the objective standard history should be held to, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire excels when speaking in a purely narrative way, giving the reader who completes it an excellent understanding of the fall of Rome.

Simply quote Wikipedia which is the best according to what I have seen so far anyway.
Take note if you care "The 2005 print includes minor revisions and a new chronology." And the hardback gives more pleasure to read.

[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). Until Womersley, this was the essential edition, but now nearing age 100, the historical analysis/commentary is dated. [ISBN 0-404-02820-9].
Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., 6 volumes (New York: Everyman's Library, 1993-1994). from the Bury text and with Gibbon's own notes, but without Bury's, many of which are superseded by more recent research. [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). The current essential edition, the most faithful to Gibbon's original text. The ancient Greek quotations are not as accurate as in Bury, but an otherwise excellent work with complete footnotes and bibliographical information for Gibbon's cryptic footnote notations. 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.)]
]

Granted, reading this book might not be considered the greatest accomplishments if you were standing among scholars. However, if your goal is an overview to this subject, then you will have succeeded once you have completed this succinct book. I thought it was well worth the time, but I don't think it has motivated me to go out and buy the complete unabridged version.

History made interesting. Gibbon writes well, thinks well, and presents well. Roman history is intensely interesting and yet so many Roman history books are intolerable. Additonally, the mind-numbing Roman histories in text books, spend most of their time quoting Gibbon.

Moses Hadas has done an excellent job in condensing Gibbon's masterpiece into a portable reader. Though far shorter than the original work that runs into thousands of pages, it succeeds in giving the reader a broad sense of the Decline and Fall, without bogging him down with extraneous details.

After completing this book, I was so intrigued that I bought the full 3-volume Penguin unabridged edition. Up to now, years later, I have only read about three-quarters of the first volume, and I do not expect to complete it anytime soon. It is obviously not that the unabridged version is bad, but that it is meant for a scholarly audience, and thus contains many chapters which are boring for the casual reader, such as a painfully detailed description of the Empire's finances. This abridged version omits all those parts, and leaves the reader with a compelling and coherent narrative of the process of corruption that destroyed arguably the greatest civilisation in the history of Mankind.

I recommend without reservation this book to anyone with an interest in the history of past civilisations.

Gibbon must be taken in the context of his time - his writing style, his prejudices, and his occasional lapse into sermonizing. His style is to say in 30-words what others would say in less than 10. His prejudices are many but one that seems to permeate most is the over-emphasis on the western empire at the expense of the east. It is as if the eastern empire did not survive another millennia after the fall of the west. But given difficult reading and language constructs and the slanted views, a greater work on the subject of the western empire probably does not exist. It is an essential though somewhat distasteful standard for anyone interested in Roman history. As yet, there is nothing comparable in scope for the western empire. For a balanced and more readable coverage of the east, I would highly recommend supplementing with the works of John Julius Norwich such as the three part history beginning with Byzantium: The Early Centuries. In addition, it would be good to supplement your study with Caesar and Christ: A History of Roman Civilization and of Christianity from Their Beginnings to A.D. 325 (Story of Civilization, No 3).

It's a literary work of art. Gibbon's style of narration is breathtaking. On every page he comes out as the true scholar that he really is. His choice of words and his style of sentence construction is consummate on every level.

Other than that, the whole account is Gibbon's perspective of the Roman Empire on a strict level. While most will concur with him on the insanity of the likes of say, Caligula, Nero; or the politically cunning inclinations of Augustus, his treatment of Christianity is open to debate. Gibbon places Christianity at the top in his list of the factors that could possibly have accelerated the empire towards decadence and its ultimate disintegration. Though this can be true on some accounts, he offers no clear explanation on how the Eastern empire could have carried on for more centuries with the religion at its very centre. It's an unwritten edict that the Byzantines were more passionate about Jesus than Western christendom.

Also, in some pages, Gibbon argues that the Roman emperors, say Marcus Aurelius for example, never really would have had an inclination towards persecuting christians on grounds of political gains. For Gibbon argues that the political elite of Rome were well aware of the fact that some kind of religion maintained social order. But his arguments are at considerable, if not complete, loggerheads with the several accounts from other historians that Rome continued to persecute Christianity until Constantine.

Persecution of Christianity might necessarily not have completely been primary disdain for the christian concept which totally conflicts with the Roman edicts of deifying dead emperors. Christianity came in handy for rogue emperors to have this sect of minorities scapegoated for their own excesses (remember Nero's fire?) or to appease the minds of a disgruntled majority which preferred to suspect them.

Finally, his stand that the "whole" empire prospered and preferred Roman rule in the age of the five good emperors is open to debate. Pax Romana might have worked for the Italian mainland at best, but not necessarily in provinces even as close as, say, Gaul.

Edward Gibbon's masterpiece is not only the finest work of history in the English language, it is also one of its greatest narratives.
No writer can fail to learn from how Gibbon used his incredible command of sources and texts to fashion his work; no student of the classic world can fail to learn from Gibbon's wealth of detail; no educated person can fail to learn from his depiction of the corruption and collapse of a once-mighty empire.
Modern historians pooh-pooh Gibbon's "bias" and "slant" and insinuate that the mighty world of professional academic history "gets" the subject in a way Gibbon did not. Gibbon was a man, of course, and his word is not final. Yet the difference is that while historians today are blind to their own equally crippling prejudices, Gibbon wears his ones on his sleeve and nevertheless dares his detractors to doubt his erudition and achievement. They are pedants, but he is the Master.
I find it interesting that while Gibbon had no formal training in history whatsoever, men and women today must spend close to a decade labouring over some insignificant point in the record to become a "real" historian. A telling point.

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is undoubtedly one of the best works of narrative history, if not the best. It spares absolutley no facts, giving an absolutley complete chronology of the Roman Empire from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the fall of Constantinople. Gibbon writes in a prose style, which appeals to some but had often been the subject of criticism to others. This style makes it somewhat difficult to read, and also more time consuming, especially factoring the massive length of the set (This particular set of Volumes 1-3 is only half of the total publication) make it difficult to read quickly, I took nearly 10 months of reading it from time to time to finish it.

Undoubtedly, reading this takes a great amount of patience and dedication, though often, Gibbon will interject chapters or comments into the narrative work dealing with analysis of certain events, most infamously, the rise of Christianity, which Gibbon writes of very negativley, equating it together with the growth of barbarism. Gibbon's view of Christianity is undoubtedly very hostile, even going as far as to partially blame it for the fall of Rome, this subjective view is also demonstrated when he discusses the Sassanian empire, openly speaking positivley of the Emperor Julian's war with the Persian king Shapur II, referring to the Persians as barbarians when they were in fact, perhaps the only civilzed society which Rome bordered. While this is not a good example of the objective standard history should be held to, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire excels when speaking in a purely narrative way, giving the reader who completes it an excellent understanding of the fall of Rome.

Simply quote Wikipedia which is the best according to what I have seen so far anyway.
Take note if you care "The 2005 print includes minor revisions and a new chronology." And the hardback gives more pleasure to read.

[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). Until Womersley, this was the essential edition, but now nearing age 100, the historical analysis/commentary is dated. [ISBN 0-404-02820-9].
Hugh Trevor-Roper, ed., 6 volumes (New York: Everyman's Library, 1993-1994). from the Bury text and with Gibbon's own notes, but without Bury's, many of which are superseded by more recent research. [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). The current essential edition, the most faithful to Gibbon's original text. The ancient Greek quotations are not as accurate as in Bury, but an otherwise excellent work with complete footnotes and bibliographical information for Gibbon's cryptic footnote notations. 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.)]
]

Granted, reading this book might not be considered the greatest accomplishments if you were standing among scholars. However, if your goal is an overview to this subject, then you will have succeeded once you have completed this succinct book. I thought it was well worth the time, but I don't think it has motivated me to go out and buy the complete unabridged version.

I feel like a jerk not rating this five stars, since it's such a world-renouned classic, a true heavyweight in the history of academia... but does it really deserve its lauded reputation? It is a very comprehensive tome (this version is one of the shorter versions available) on a very broad subject, and when this became available to the general public in the 1770's I'm sure they had never seen anything like it. Today, there's a lot more competition for our reading attention. If you want a very in-depth accounting of the history of the late Roman Empire, I'd still absolutely recommend this book, but point out that it can be dry in parts. To be fair, I'm sure it isn't easy to avoid sounding repetitious while accounting for each Roman Emperor's fate since the Republic fell... they begin to sound alike (this one killed that one, etc). I read this in anticipation of moving to Italy, and I'm glad I did. There are so many ruins and archaeological sites here, and I now at least have a passing familiarity with more aspects of Roman history. If you are going to Italy, and you want to make the most of the trip, I would say read it. This is one of those books I believe will pay to read again in a few years, when I have accumulated more knowledge on the topic from other sources.
One last item: there are many versions of this book available, and I can't comment on all of them, but this particular edition would be greatly enhanced if more maps were included.

Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" is without a doubt one of the most well-written and truly comprehensive historical works concerning the Roman Empire. From the military maneuvers of the northern legions to the intrigues of the Imperial Court, Gibbon showcases the history of Rome as it unfolded--often relying on the eyewitness testimony of contemporary writers to give readers a sense of the passions and policies of the time. There are a few minute problems--or rather gaps--in Gibbon's work, but given that he originally published in the late 1700's we can excuse his lack of complete information. Overall, an excellent read and a great history of such an important subject.

I purchased all six volumes of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This work is written in the beautiful and fluid 18th century English. Gibbon is a master author, and the book was extremely well researched, consulting the works of Tacitus, Livy, Suetonius, and Polybius, Roman historians of fame. Volumes 1-3 contains the history of the Roman empire from 180 A.D. to 490 A.D., covering the end of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, to the time when Odoacer usurped the throne of the western empire. Volumes 4-6 contains the history of the eastern empire, from the late 300's to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. I highly recommend both box sets. All volumes together are approximately 3600 pages, and go into detail for pages subjects that are written only for about a few paragraphs in other books. A must for any enthusiast of the history of the Roman Empire.

Long. Very enjoyable though, even if sometimes dry. Gibbon has a wit about him. And if you are interested in linguistics and history, the way in which he uses words is an interesting foray into the changes in the English language since the book's writing.

Gibbon's Decline - whilst ancient history scholars of today will recognise the challenges in the theories which are, understandably, outdated with current knowledge of the subject - is a book that should be read not just for its subject matter but as a great exponent of historiography.
Ancient History scholars - don't take it as a precise secondary source. Everyone else should a)have it on their shelves, b)have read it.

I had, already nearly 20 years ago, browsed passages of Gibbon's original, and used it as a reference. But I had no desire to plow through the complete unabridged six volumes.

Finally, I decided to look for an abridged version, and I found Mueller's. Long and detailed enough to catch all of Gibbon's high points. He also keeps enough of the original to capture Gibbon's style and love of subject.