‘The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volume 1’ by Edward Gibbon

Fifty years ago when I was a small child there was a whacky TV comedy show that we all watched called ‘The Goodies’ in which Bill Oddie, Graham Garden and Tim Brook-Taylor capered about entertainingly. In 1975 they released a song with a catchy tune and lyrics which reached Number 4 in the charts. It was all about a set of dance moves and went something like this:

Oo, oo, oo, the funky gibbon!

He's just like you,

So come on and do

The funky gibbon now!

This month, because it is two hundred and fifty years since its first publication in February 1776, I decided to read my way through what I came to think of as ‘The Chunky Gibbon’. It is over 580 pages long in the Penguin Classics edition, and is just the first of six similarly long volumes that were released periodically over a period of twelve years.

The full history covers some 1500 years from the height of the Roman Empire in then first century of the first millennium AD to the aftermath of the fall of Byzantium in the fifteenth century. This first volume ends with the rise of Constantine in the fourth century. I also read David Womersley’s introduction, which was a further 108 pages long, so all in all quite a commitment.

My first reflection is that I enjoyed reading this as much as a work of literature as a work of history. It is for the most part a most elegantly written narrative that focuses on high politics, outlining the careers of leading figures in Rome, most of whom appear to have been a pretty violent and unscrupulous bunch. There are footnotes on pretty well every page setting out the sources used and all manner of supplementary facts, observations and figures.

The vast majority of the time Gibbon relies on written sources, particularly contemporary histories written by the Romans themselves by people such as Tacitus, Cassius Dio and Herodian. He does not include much material derived from archaeological discoveries, although from time to time he includes material on specific sites to illustrate broader points about imperial decadence. The following passage describing Diocletian’s palace in what is now Split, Croatia, is a notable example which also illustrates Gibbon’s polished style of writing:

The form was quadrangular, flanked with sixteen towers. Two of the sides were near six hundred, and the other two near seven hundred feet in length. The whole was constructed of a beautiful free-stone, extracted from the neighbouring quarries of Trau and Tragutium, and very little inferior to marble itself. Four streets, intersecting each other at right angles, divided the several parts of this great edifice, and the approach to the principal apartment was from a very stately entrance, which is still denominated the Goden Gate. The approach was terminated by a persitylium of granite columns, on the side of which we discover the square temple of Aesculapius, on the other the octagon temple of Jupiter. The latter of those deities Diocletian revered as the patron of his fortunes, the former the protector of his health.

My second reflection is that Gibbon does, I think, assume quite a lot of pre-existing knowledge on the part of his readers. Educated people of the late eighteenth century were presumably very much more informed as a matter of course about ancient history than we are today, allowing Gibbon to present his own interpretation as well as a very full account of the period he was writing about. He does not see a need to introduce all the people he writes about, and most irritating for me, does not include many dates at all. The Penguin Classics edition has no index (also annoying) but it does include a very detailed contents at the start which includes dates that I referred to continually when reading to provide a basic temporal scaffold. In retrospect I wish I had read a more recent and introductory history of ancient Rome before embarking on this. It would certainly have helped me get more out of reading Gibbon.

Thirdly, it is important to stress that Gibbon was essentially writing an international history in Volume 1 because the Roman Empire extended so far at its peak and the surrounding areas were at war with it much of the time. There are long sections about regions beyond the boundaries of the Empire (Persia and Germany particularly), some of which have more of a social and economic character. There is less of this in relation to the Empire itself with the major exception of Chapter 2 which surveys the sources of Roman prosperity in the first and second centuries. Other early chapters explain the politics and constitution of early Rome at the start of his period and the geography of the Empire. He is astonishingly comprehensive.

I had also not appreciated – and I assume Gibbon is correct about this - just how little time during their reigns some of the major Emperors actually spent in the city of Rome itself:

Till Diocletian, in the twentieth year of his reign, celebrated his Roman triumph, it is extremely doubtful whether he ever visited the ancient capital of the Empire.

After the defeat of Maxentius, the victorious emperor (Constantine) passed no more than two or three months in Rome, which he visited twice during the remainder of his life, to celebrate the solemn festivals of the tenth and twentieth years of his reign.

The other aspect of the book I enjoyed and found interesting were the occasional forays Gibbon makes into wider political commentary, clearly looking to contribute to contemporary eighteenth century enlightenment thinking while also discussing the decline of the Roman Empire a millennium and a half earlier. Some of these passages have considerable prescience today too such as this little gem:

The obvious definition of a monarchy seems to be that of a state, in which a single person, by whatsoever name he may be distinguished, is intrusted with the execution of the laws, the management of the revenue, and the command of the army. But, unless public liberty is protected by intrepid and vigilant guardians, the authority of so formidable a magistrate will soon degenerate into despotism. 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 connexion between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been on the side of the people. A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against the enterprises of an aspiring prince.

The reference here to ‘an age of superstition’ is interesting because of the huge weight Gibbon places on the rise of Christianity as an antecedent, if not a full on cause, of the decline of the Roman Empire. Chapters 15 and 16 of Volume 1 amount to no more or less of a history of the early Christian Church, together with an analysis of how this ‘pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition, and finally erected the triumphant banner of the cross on the ruins of the Capitol.’

Reading this was hard work at times, but it was absolutely worthwhile and it has given me an appetite to read much more now about the Ancient World about which I remain pretty shamefully ignorant beyond the main outline story.