The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 3 Cilt Takım — Edward Gibbon

I set out upon Gibbon s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and was immediately dominated by both the story and the style recalled Winston Churchill I devoured Gibbon I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all I was not even estranged by his naughty footnotes In the two centuries since its completion Gibbon s magnum opus which encompasses some thirteen hundred years as it swings across Europe North Africa and Asia has refused to go the way of many classics and grow musty on the shelves Gibbon is a landmark and a signpost a landmark of human achievement and a signpost because the social convulsions of the Roman Empire as described by him sometimes prefigure and indicate convulsions which shake the whole world today wrote E M Forster Never far below the surface of the magnificent narrative lies the author s wit and sweeping irony exemplified by Gibbon s famous definition of history as little more than the register of the crimes follies and misfortunes of mankind The third volume contains chapters forty nine through seventy one of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

It was at Rome on the 15th of October 1764 as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol while the barefooted 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 recorded Edward Gibbon with characteristic exactitude Over a period of some twenty years the luminous 18th century historian a precise dapper idiosyncratic little gentleman famous for rapping his snuff box devoted his considerable genius to writing an epic chronicle of the entire Roman Empire s decline His single flash of inspiration produced what is arguably the greatest historical work in any language and surely the most magnificent narrative history ever written in English Gibbon is one of those few who hold as high a place in the history of literature as in the roll of great historians noted Professor J B Bury his most celebrated editor

Gibbon is a kind of bridge that connects the ancient with the modern ages noted Thomas Carlyle And how gorgeously does it swing across the gloomy and tumultuous chasm of these barbarous centuries Indeed Gibbon the supreme historian of the Enlightenment the illustrious scholar who envisioned history as a branch of literature seemed almost predestined to write his monumental account of the Roman Empire s terrible self destruction I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion wrote the author in the famous epigram that summed up his towering achievement in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire The second volume contains chapters twenty seven through forty eight of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

It was at Rome on the 15th of October 1764 as I sat musing amid the ruins of the capitol while the barefooted 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 recorded Edward Gibbon with characteristic exactitude Over a period of some twenty years the luminous 18th century historian a precise dapper idiosyncratic little gentleman famous for rapping his snuff box devoted his considerable genius to writing an epic chronicle of the entire Roman Empire s decline His single flash of inspiration produced what is arguably the greatest historical work in any language and surely the most magnificent narrative history ever written in English Gibbon is one of those few who hold as high a place in the history of literature as in the roll of great historians noted Professor J B Bury his most celebrated editor