Customer Reviews

Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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I think the other reviewer misunderstands Hadas's intention. As Hadas states in his introduction, this book is intended as digest and, hopefully, a guide to the fuller work. Hadas pragmatically realizes that most readers are unlikely to undertake a multi-volume book that totals literally thousands of pages; but his abridgement -- rendered with admirable coherence for such an undertaking -- provides both a taste of the fuller work and hopefully a temptation to read it. If more scholars like Hadas existed, the great works of literature and antquity might have a broader readership today.

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.

Moses Hadas was a noted classical scholar and a talented writer. His version of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon, is the most accessible version available. It retains many of Gibbons insights and offers some of Gibbon's most interesting quotes, as: "...so intimate is the connection between the throne and the alter that the banner of the church is very seldom seen on the side of the people." For anyone interested in the similarities between Rome and the United States it is a must read.

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 have just about finished the first book of the three included in the set, and I will say that the product is very informative, but that the prose is difficult to follow. There were many paragraphs (even sentences) that I had re-read and consider carefully before understanding the idea that the author was trying to convey. Many of his sentences are quite long and convoluted, so be prepared for a lot of "decoding." However, I would highly recommend this 3-volume set, as it is quite informative.

Eventhough this is an abridgement of Gibbon's
great treatise it is a shame that the subject is treated in such a cursory fashion. Little attention is given to one emperor before the reader is pushed on to the next one.

Hadas' edition does give us some of the early history of growth of Christianity, one of the underlying causes of the downfall.

All in all, I found myself wanting more detail. After reading this book I felt like a had read the equivalent of a Chinese meal. It was OK but I soon found myself wanting more