Customer Reviews

The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. 1

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I do not recommend buying an edition of "The Decline and Fall" based upon price alone, because for many reasons, which will become clearer to you after reading this complicated and scholarly work, the editions vary in content and price, nor does price alone guarantee quality.

For many hours prior to purchasing, I researched the numerous editions offered by different publishers and read reviews, and discovered a consensus among Gibbon fans in favor of Womersley's unabridged edition, in part because it includes a complete and unmodernized text, Gibbon's own comments and notes, and his famous Vindication, a final and thorough answer to scurrilous critics of his time. All of this is provided at a quite reasonable price, considering the length of the work (in excess of 1,300 pages), albeit in soft cover which I find makes a book easier to read, if slightly less durable.

I recommend buying this new edition from Amazon, instead of the used editions also offered here, because many of them, I discovered after investigating, are not the same as this one I am reviewing (ISBN 0-14-043393-7, which is Volume I). Like I said, there are many editions of Gibbon's masterpiece floating about, old and new, of varying quality and content. The vendors' failure to disclose the ISBN in their descriptions prohibits any purchase by the discriminating. Just pay the seventeen or so bucks for the new book, which is dirt cheap for a work of this magnitude.

There should be no need to defend Gibbon nor his work, which is simply the best I have yet read. I loved history as a boy, even while reading the simple and often stupid books offered in school. Imagine how much more I enjoyed history written by such a master of prose as Gibbon, the most thorough, meticulous and honest historian I have yet encountered.

We owe a debt of gratitude to a historian who has perused enormous quantities of ancient texts in Latin and Greek and other languages, such as would confound the vast majority of readers today, and with his formidable powers of intellect, analyzed their veracity, by comparing one against the other, and judged keenly of their worth. Gibbon had for his time a vast encyclopedic knowledge, for by his own admission, he devoted his life to reading. Gibbon's love was not among humans, but among books. He possessed an excellent understanding of government, which is the more understandable when you discover he served as a Member of Parliament for a number of years. His grasp of military science is explained in part by his service in the militia as an officer. To all these things, we must add an innate, profound understanding of human nature.

Why bother with Gibbon? Why not read the original, the ancient and medieval writers, from whom Gibbon based his work? That is a good question that I asked myself. Here is the answer. We cannot trust the ancient writers to be truthful or accurate in every event. For one thing, they sometimes contradict each other, which means one or both are lying. Also, they leave out important details, which can be pieced together by circumstantial evidence, if you have found it by exhaustive research.

This is where Gibbon comes in. He has performed exhaustive research that consumed a large portion of his scholarly and reflective lifetime. Gibbon is no fool, and never succumbs to the usual vices of enthusiasm or its opposite, cynicism. He is calm, rational, penetrative; just the guide and the mentor you want. He never takes an ancient historian at face value without considering their motives, prejudices, passions, and even their personal histories. Gibbon has studied not just the history, but the historians, and the history of the historian's countries. Not only has Gibbon accumulated and summarized the ancient and medieval texts, but interpreted and analyzed with his considerable deductive powers, to form a whole that is greater than the parts. Thus a novice does better with Gibbon than with the original. Gibbon's copious notes explain where has made interpretations, leaving you free to form different conclusions, should you desire.

Some reviewers are peeved that Gibbon suffers an opinion that disagrees with their own, and for this reason alone, they degrade his work. I experience the same treatment by those who are alarmed that my reviews have an actual opinion instead of being a rubber stamp marked "PERFECTION". If this intolerant philosophy were carried on, then no-one should dare express an unseasonable opinion of anything at all, and we should all become a tribe of dullards. Of course Gibbon expresses many opinions, some the inevitable product of his country, class and times; and this is the mark of intellectual honesty. You should never read without a critical mind, and should be prepared to disagree with an author on some issues, as I do with Gibbon, while agreeing with him on others. I especially favor his ideas concerning the causes and effects of the rise of Christianity, many of which can be observed today.

Look to find a better history than this, in any language, written during any time since the advent of letters. Look far and wide, as long as you like... and then revisit Gibbon, and see whether you have yet found an equal.

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.)]
]

This mighty book is the paradigm for any historical writing. Only to imagine its first volume was written in 1776 produce awe to the reader. Sure it contains errors that had been pointed out by more recent investigations. Sure is dated in some aspects. But what a monument in itself it is!

It stands as a reference for every historian of the period, for every serious student of Roman history, for every history lover.


Erudite and at the same time so clear and interesting work. Gibbon's prose has a very spicy taste, once you get used to it, you will savor each paragraph.

The study begins with Antonines Period and ends at the Fall of the Empire. Thru that huge period of time, all main characters as Emperors, Generals, Senators, Consuls, Barbaric Kings and their people are shown and their deeds recounted.

The enormous amount of sources consulted by the author and his masterful way to put all that data in an ordered and neat mode still amaze me.

No student or researcher should skip this Historical Monument!

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

I read all the reviews of all the various editions of Gibbons and I finally decided on the Womersley. I wanted the footnotes. But when the paperback arrived, I found that the book's print was so small that, even with my bifocals, reading led to headaches (and the footnotes were even smaller). I then bought the Folio Society edition, which cut most of the footnotes but I was able to read it without headaches. Some of the footnotes are critical to understanding the Gibbon, but if you remove the op. cits and Ibids alone, I think two thirds of the footnotes would disappear. I balanced the need for those footnotes with being able to read it at all. For me, the Folio Society set (which I got for $41 on EBay) was well worth the money.

JPS

This work seems to be worth a telescope, as if it were a universe from its size. But put under a microscope, the fine structure shows it to be a work of its time -- more than 200 years ago -- and not a great one at that.

In Gibbon's day, history was still a part of the art of rhetoric, responsible for justifying deeds in legal and royal courts, and for exhorting the populace to behave in given ways. These features remain in Macaulay's history, some decades later, of the revolution that produced William and Mary, as well as Carlyle's history of the French Revolution.

The results are curious to behold. In one chapter Gibbon casts scorn on Jewish law. About 200 lines later, he claims the basis in Judaism as one of the glories of Christianity.

What's really strange about that is that Gibbon's work was regarded by some contemporaries as anti-Christian. Why? Because he blamed the fall of the empire on the rise of Christianity.

Or he did in part. Gibbon was actually anti-democracy and it's no coincidence that he wrote the first three volumes during the American Revolution and the last three about the time of the French Revolution. He believed that if Rome had never elevated people of knightly families to the senate; if it had not extended citizenship to Latium, let alone to Europe and to barbarians, it would not have fallen. He thought Christianity was a paradigm of democracy, taking its membership from slaves and women and other powerless people, and thus devaluing the nobility of Rome and the priesthoods that relied on the strict-form confarreatio marriage for their hierophants.

He never seems to have considered that Rome allowed its men to avoid responsibility for families by marrying girls too young to have children. When those girls got out of such marriages, including by divorce, they then could refuse confarreatio, particularly if they joined the religion of Isis or became Jews, let alone Christians. That is what helped reduce the number of men eligible for the most important priesthoods and cut back on the numbers eligible for the Senate. Without extending citizenship and promoting members of the lower classes, Rome would have found itself without a government, particularly after the epidemic of Marcus Antoninus Augustus which killed something like five million people in a couple of bouts.

And he doesn't seem to have learned anything from the history known in his times about the collapse of the Spanish Empire, the Greek Empire, the Persian Empire, the Byzantine Empire. It didn't need Christianity or any form of democracy to kill Rome, any more than it requires poison to kill a human being.

Not only does Gibbon hare off after the wrong causes, he can't support what he does say very well. Even the very pro-Gibbon editor of the 1834 edition, admits in notes to the second part that Gibbon contradicts himself, makes mistakes about Roman law, and doesn't handle other data well.

So while this is one of the biggest single works on Roman history, it's badly dated, badly supported in terms of evidence and logic, and not all that well written either. Caveat emptor!

I enjoyed this book, but some of the praise for it ("the best history book ever written in the English language!!") is over the top. It is no coincidence that intellectuals have embraced this history of the Roman empire above all others - the author is openly skeptical of Christianity and sympathetic to barbarians.

Gibbon's writing skills are also overrated in my opinion. Using 20 words to express a point that could be expressed in 10 words is, in my book, bad writing. For example, instead of writing "XYZ is true", Gibbon will write "It would not be incorrect for an observer to note that XYZ is true". This gets exhausting after a few hundred pages. He also overuses certain words, such as 'insensibly'.