|
More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
|
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
|
|
(The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, 6 vols, 1776–88) Account by Edward *Gibbon of a great swathe of European history from Rome in the 2nd century AD to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. The most ambititous and distinguished historical work in English literature, it is also famous for the precisely pinpointed moment of its conception: 'It was at Rome, on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.'
|
|
|
|
Much of his theme was a lament for rational and classical thought, falling victim in the medieval Christian centuries to the superstitious predecessors of those barefoot friars, in a process which he described as 'the triumph of barbarism and religion'.
|
|
|
|