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The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

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The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire





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History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon, Esq.

With notes by the Rev. H. H. Milman



Vol. 1



Introduction

Preface By The Editor.

The great work of Gibbon is indispensable to the student of
history. The literature of Europe offers no substitute for "The
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." It has obtained undisputed
possession, as rightful occupant, of the vast period which it
comprehends. However some subjects, which it embraces, may have
undergone more complete investigation, on the general view of the
whole period, this history is the sole undisputed authority to
which all defer, and from which few appeal to the original
writers, or to more modern compilers. The inherent interest of
the subject, the inexhaustible labor employed upon it; the
immense condensation of matter; the luminous arrangement; the
general accuracy; the style, which, however monotonous from its
uniform stateliness, and sometimes wearisome from its elaborate
ar., is throughout vigorous, animated, often picturesque always
commands attention, always conveys its meaning with emphatic
energy, describes with singular breadth and fidelity, and
generalizes with unrivalled felicity of expression; all these
high qualifications have secured, and seem likely to secure, its
permanent place in historic literature.

This vast design of Gibbon, the magnificent whole into which
he has cast the decay and ruin of the ancient civilization, the
formation and birth of the new order of things, will of itself,
independent of the laborious execution of his immense plan,
render "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" an
unapproachable subject to the future historian: ^* in the
eloquent language of his recent French editor, M. Guizot: -
[Footnote * A considerable portion of this preface has already
appeared before us public in the Quarterly Review.]

"The gradual decline of the most extraordinary dominion
which has ever invaded and oppressed the world; the fall of that
immense empire, erected on the ruins of so many kingdoms,
republics, and states both barbarous and civilized; and forming
in its turn, by its dismemberment, a multitude of states,
republics, and kingdoms; the annihilation of the religion of
Greece and Rome; the birth and the progress of the two new
religions which have shared the most beautiful regions of the
earth; the decrepitude of the ancient world, the spectacle of its
expiring glory and degenerate manners; the infancy of the modern
world, the picture of its first progress, of the new direction
given to the mind and character of man - such a subject must
necessarily fix the attention and excite the interest of men, who
cannot behold with indifference those memorable epochs, during
which, in the fine language of Corneille -

'Un grand destin commence, un grand destin s'acheve.'"
This extent and harmony of design is unquestionably that which
distinguishes the work of Gibbon from all other great historical
compositions. He has first bridged the abyss between ancient and
modern times, and connected together the two great worlds of
history. The great advantage which the classical historians
possess over those of modern times is in unity of plan, of course
greatly facilitated by the narrower sphere to which their
researches were confined. Except Herodotus, the great historians
of Greece - we exclude the more modern compilers, like Diodorus
Siculus - limited themselves to a single period, or at 'east to
the contracted sphere of Grecian affairs. As far as the
Barbarians trespassed within the Grecian boundary, or were
necessarily mingled up with Grecian politics, they were admitted
into the pale of Grecian history; but to Thucydides and to
Xenophon, excepting in the Persian inroad of the latter, Greece
was the world. Natural unity confined their narrative almost to
chronological order, the episodes were of rare occurrence and
extremely brief. To the Roman historians the course was equally
clear and defined. Rome was their centre of unity; and the
uniformity with which the circle of the Roman dominion spread
around, the regularity with which their civil polity expanded,
forced, as it were, upon the Roman historian that plan which
Polybius announces as the subject of his history, the means and
the manner by which the whole world became subject to the Roman
sway. How different the complicated politics of the European
kingdoms! Every national history, to be complete, must, in a
certain sense, be the history of Europe; there is no knowing to
how remote a quarter it may be necessary to trace our most
domestic events; from a country, how apparently disconnected, may
originate the impulse which gives its direction to the whole
course of affairs.

In imitation of his classical models, Gibbon places Rome as
the cardinal point from which his inquiries diverge, and to which
they bear constant reference; yet how immeasurable the space over
which those inquiries range; how complicated, how confused, how
apparently inextricable the causes which tend to the decline of
the Roman empire! how countless the nations which swarm forth,
in mingling and indistinct hordes, constantly changing the
geographical limits - incessantly confounding the natural
boundaries! At first sight, the whole period, the whole state of
the world, seems to offer no more secure footing to an historical
adventurer than the chaos of Milton - to be in a state of
irreclaimable disorder, best described in the language of the
poet: -

- "A dark
Illimitable ocean, without bound,
Without dimension, where length, breadth, and height,

And time, and place, are lost: where eldest Night
And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold
Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise
Of endless wars, and by confusion stand."

We feel that the unity and harmony of narrative, which shall
comprehend this period of social disorganization, must be
ascribed entirely to the skill and luminous disposition of the
historian. It is in this sublime Gothic architecture of his
work, in which the boundless range, the infinite variety, the, at
first sight, incongruous gorgeousness of the separate parts,
nevertheless are all subordinate to one main and predominant
idea, that Gibbon is unrivalled. We cannot but admire the manner
in which he masses his materials, and arranges his facts in
successive groups, not according to chronological order, but to
their moral or political connection; the distinctness with which
he marks his periods of gradually increasing decay; and the skill
with which, though advancing on separate parallels of history, he
shows the common tendency of the slower or more rapid religious
or civil innovations. However these principles of composition
may demand more than ordinary attention on the part of the
reader, they can alone impress upon the memory the real course,
and the relative importance of the events. Whoever would justly
appreciate the superiority of Gibbon's lucid arrangement, should
attempt to make his way through the regular but wearisome annals
of Tillemont, or even the less ponderous volumes of Le Beau.
Both these writers adhere, almost entirely, to chronological
order; the consequence is, that we are twenty times called upon
to break off, and resume the thread of six or eight wars in
different parts of the empire; to suspend the operations of a
military expedition for a court intrigue; to hurry away from a
siege to a council; and the same page places us in the middle of
a campaign against the barbarians, and in the depths of the
Monophysite controversy. In Gibbon it is not always easy to bear
in mind the exact dates but the course of events is ever clear
and distinct; like a skilful general, though his troops advance
from the most remote and opposite quarters, they are constantly
bearing down and concentrating themselves on one point - that
which is still occupied by the name, and by the waning power of
Rome. Whether he traces the progress of hostile religions, or
leads from the shores of the Baltic, or the verge of the Chinese
empire, the successive hosts of barbarians - though one wave has
hardly burst and discharged itself, before another swells up and
approaches - all is made to flow in the same direction, and the
impression which each makes upon the tottering fabric of the
Roman greatness, connects their distant movements, and measures
the relative importance assigned to them in the panoramic
history. The more peaceful and didactic episodes on the
development of the Roman law, or even on the details of
ecclesiastical history, interpose themselves as resting-places or
divisions between the periods of barbaric invasion. In short,
though distracted first by the two capitals, and afterwards by
the formal partition of the empire, the extraordinary felicity of
arrangement maintains an order and a regular progression. As our
horizon expands to reveal to us the gathering tempests which are
forming far beyond the boundaries of the civilized world - as we
follow their successive approach to the trembling frontier - the
compressed and receding line is still distinctly visible; though
gradually dismembered and the broken fragments assuming the form
of regular states and kingdoms, the real relation of those
kingdoms to the empire is maintained and defined; and even when
the Roman dominion has shrunk into little more than the province
of Thrace - when the name of Rome, confined, in Italy, to the
walls of the city - yet it is still the memory, the shade of the
Roman greatness, which extends over the wide sphere into which
the historian expands his later narrative; the whole blends into
the unity, and is manifestly essential to the double catastrophe
of his tragic drama.

But the amplitude, the magnificence, or the harmony of
design, are, though imposing, yet unworthy claims on our
admiration, unless the details are filled up with correctness and
accuracy. No writer has been more severely tried on this point
than Gibbon. He has undergone the triple scrutiny of theological
zeal quickened by just resentment, of literary emulation, and of
that mean and invidious vanity which delights in detecting errors
in writers of established fame. On the result of the trial, we
may be permitted to summon competent witnesses before we deliver
our own judgment.

M. Guizot, in his preface, after stating that in France and
Germany, as well as in England, in the most enlightened countries
of Europe, Gibbon is constantly cited as an authority, thus
proceeds: -

"I have had occasion, during my labors, to consult the
writings of philosophers, who have treated on the finances of the
Roman empire; of scholars, who have investigated the chronology;
of theologians, who have searched the depths of ecclesiastical
history; of writers on law, who have studied with care the Roman
jurisprudence; of Orientalists, who have occupied themselves with
the Arabians and the Koran; of modern historians, who have
entered upon extensive researches touching the crusades and their
influence; each of these writers has remarked and pointed out, in
the 'History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' some
negligences, some false or imperfect views some omissions, which
it is impossible not to suppose voluntary; they have rectified
some facts combated with advantage some assertions; but in
general they have taken the researches and the ideas of Gibbon,
as points of departure, or as proofs of the researches or of the
new opinions which they have advanced."

M. Guizot goes on to state his own impressions on reading
Gibbon's history, and no authority will have greater weight with
those to whom the extent and accuracy of his historical
researches are known: -

"After a first rapid perusal, which allowed me to feel
nothing but the interest of a narrative, always animated, and,
notwithstanding its extent and the variety of objects which it
makes to pass before the view, always perspicuous, I entered upon
a minute examination of the details of which it was composed; and
the opinion which I then formed was, I confess, singularly
severe. I discovered, in certain chapters, errors which appeared
to me sufficiently important and numerous to make me believe that
they had been written with extreme negligence; in others, I was
struck with a certain tinge of partiality and prejudice, which
imparted to the exposition of the facts that want of truth and
justice, which the English express by their happy term
misrepresentation. Some imperfect (tronquees) quotations; some
passages, omitted unintentionally or designedly cast a suspicion
on the honesty (bonne foi) of the author; and his violation of
the first law of history - increased to my eye by the prolonged
attention with which I occupied myself with every phrase, every
note, every reflection - caused me to form upon the whole work, a
judgment far too rigorous. After having finished my labors, I
allowed some time to elapse before I reviewed the whole. A
second attentive and regular perusal of the entire work, of the
notes of the author, and of those which I had thought it right to
subjoin, showed me how much I had exaggerated the importance of
the reproaches which Gibbon really deserved; I was struck with
the same errors, the same partiality on certain subjects; but I
had been far from doing adequate justice to the immensity of his
researches, the variety of his knowledge, and above all, to that
truly philosophical discrimination (justesse d'esprit) which
judges the past as it would judge the present; which does not
permit itself to be blinded by the clouds which time gathers
around the dead, and which prevent us from seeing that, under the
toga, as under the modern dress, in the senate as in our
councils, men were what they still are, and that events took
place eighteen centuries ago, as they take place in our days. I
then felt that his book, in spite of its faults, will always be a
noble work - and that we may correct his errors and combat his
prejudices, without ceasing to admit that few men have combined,
if we are not to say in so high a degree, at least in a manner so
complete, and so well regulated, the necessary qualifications for
a writer of history."

The present editor has followed the track of Gibbon through
many parts of his work; he has read his authorities with constant
reference to his pages, and must pronounce his deliberate
judgment, in terms of the highest admiration as to his general
accuracy. Many of his seeming errors are almost inevitable from
the close condensation of his matter. From the immense range of
his history, it was sometimes necessary to compress into a single
sentence, a whole vague and diffuse page of a Byzantine
chronicler. Perhaps something of importance may have thus
escaped, and his expressions may not quite contain the whole
substance of the passage from which they are taken. His limits,
at times, compel him to sketch; where that is the case, it is not
fair to expect the full details of the finished picture. At
times he can only deal with important results; and in his account
of a war, it sometimes requires great attention to discover that
the events which seem to be comprehended in a single campaign,
occupy several years. But this admirable skill in selecting and
giving prominence to the points which are of real weight and
importance - this distribution of light and shade - though
perhaps it may occasionally betray him into vague and imperfect
statements, is one of the highest excellencies of Gibbon's
historic manner. It is the more striking, when we pass from the
works of his chief authorities, where, after laboring through
long, minute, and wearisome descriptions of the accessary and
subordinate circumstances, a single unmarked and undistinguished
sentence, which we may overlook from the inattention of fatigue,
contains the great moral and political result.

Gibbon's method of arrangement, though on the whole most
favorable to the clear comprehension of the events, leads
likewise to apparent inaccuracy. That which we expect to find in
one part is reserved for another. The estimate which we are to
form, depends on the accurate balance of statements in remote
parts of the work; and we have sometimes to correct and modify
opinions, formed from one chapter by those of another. Yet, on
the other hand, it is astonishing how rarely we detect
contradiction; the mind of the author has already harmonized the
whole result to truth and probability; the general impression is
almost invariably the same. The quotations of Gibbon have
likewise been called in question; - I have, in general, been more
inclined to admire their exactitude, than to complain of their
indistinctness, or incompleteness. Where they are imperfect, it
is commonly from the study of brevity, and rather from the desire
of compressing the substance of his notes into pointed and
emphatic sentences, than from dishonesty, or uncandid suppression
of truth.

These observations apply more particularly to the accuracy
and fidelity of the historian as to his facts; his inferences, of
course, are more liable to exception. It is almost impossible to
trace the line between unfairness and unfaithfulness; between
intentional misrepresentation and undesigned false coloring. The
relative magnitude and importance of events must, in some
respect, depend upon the mind before which they are presented;
the estimate of character, on the habits and feelings of the
reader. Christians, like M. Guizot and ourselves, will see some
things, and some persons, in a different light from the historian
of the Decline and Fall. We may deplore the bias of his mind; we
may ourselves be on our guard against the danger of being misled,
and be anxious to warn less wary readers against the same perils;
but we must not confound this secret and unconscious departure
from truth, with the deliberate violation of that veracity which
is the only title of an historian to our confidence. Gibbon, it
may be fearlessly asserted, is rarely chargeable even with the
suppression of any material fact, which bears upon individual
character; he may, with apparently invidious hostility, enhance
the errors and crimes, and disparage the virtues of certain
persons; yet, in general, he leaves us the materials for forming
a fairer judgment; and if he is not exempt from his own
prejudices, perhaps we might write passions, yet it must be
candidly acknowledged, that his philosophical bigotry is not more
unjust than the theological partialities of those ecclesiastical
writers who were before in undisputed possession of this province
of history.

We are thus naturally led to that great misrepresentation
which pervades his history - his false estimate of the nature and
influence of Christianity.

But on this subject some preliminary caution is necessary,
lest that should be expected from a new edition, which it is
impossible that it should completely accomplish. We must first
be prepared with the only sound preservative against the false
impression likely to be produced by the perusal of Gibbon; and we
must see clearly the real cause of that false impression. The
former of these cautions will be briefly suggested in its proper
place, but it may be as well to state it, here, somewhat more at
length. The art of Gibbon, or at least the unfair impression
produced by his two memorable chapters, consists in his
confounding together, in one indistinguishable mass, the origin
and apostolic propagation of the new religion, with its later
progress. No argument for the divine authority of Christianity
has been urged with greater force, or traced with higher
eloquence, than that deduced from its primary development,
explicable on no other hypothesis than a heavenly origin, and
from its rapid extension through great part of the Roman empire.
But this argument - one, when confined within reasonable limits,
of unanswerable force - becomes more feeble and disputable in
proportion as it recedes from the birthplace, as it were, of the
religion. The further Christianity advanced, the more causes
purely human were enlisted in its favor; nor can it be doubted
that those developed with such artful exclusiveness by Gibbon did
concur most essentially to its establishment. It is in the
Christian dispensation, as in the material world. In both it is
as the great First Cause, that the Deity is most undeniably
manifest. When once launched in regular motion upon the bosom of
space, and endowed with all their properties and relations of
weight and mutual attraction, the heavenly bodies appear to
pursue their courses according to secondary laws, which account
for all their sublime regularity. So Christianity proclaims its
Divine Author chiefly in its first origin and development. When
it had once received its impulse from above - when it had once
been infused into the minds of its first teachers - when it had
gained full possession of the reason and affections of the
favored few - it might be - and to the Protestant, the rationa
Christian, it is impossible to define when it really was - left
to make its way by its native force, under the ordinary secret
agencies of all-ruling Providence. The main question, the divine
origin of the religion, was dexterously eluded, or speciously
conceded by Gibbon; his plan enabled him to commence his account,
in most parts, below the apostolic times; and it was only by the
strength of the dark coloring with which he brought out the
failings and the follies of the succeeding ages, that a shadow of
doubt and suspicion was thrown back upon the primitive period of
Christianity.


"The theologian," says Gibbon, "may indulge the pleasing
task of describing religion as she descended from heaven, arrayed
in her native purity; a more melancholy duty is imposed upon the
historian: - he must discover the inevitable mixture of error and
corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon earth
among a weak and degenerate race of beings." Divest this passage
of the latent sarcasm betrayed by the subsequent tone of the
whole disquisition, and it might commence a Christian history
written in the most Christian spirit of candor. But as the
historian, by seeming to respect, yet by dexterously confounding
the limits of the sacred land, contrived to insinuate that it was
an Utopia which had no existence but in the imagination of the
theologian - as he suggested rather than affirmed that the days
of Christian purity were a kind of poetic golden age; - so the
theologian, by venturing too far into the domain of the
historian, has been perpetually obliged to contest points on
which he had little chance of victory - to deny facts established
on unshaken evidence - and thence, to retire, if not with the
shame of defeat, yet with but doubtful and imperfect success.
Paley, with his intuitive sagacity, saw through the
difficulty of answering Gibbon by the ordinary arts of
controversy; his emphatic sentence, "Who can refute a sneer?"
contains as much truth as point. But full and pregnant as this
phrase is, it is not quite the whole truth; it is the tone in
which the progress of Christianity is traced, in comparison with
the rest of the splendid and prodigally ornamented work, which is
the radical defect in the "Decline and Fall." Christianity alone
receives no embellishment from the magic of Gibbon's language;
his imagination is dead to its moral dignity; it is kept down by
a general zone of jealous disparagement, or neutralized by a
painfully elaborate exposition of its darker and degenerate
periods. There are occasions, indeed, when its pure and exalted
humanity, when its manifestly beneficial influence, can compel
even him, as it were, to fairness, and kindle his unguarded
eloquence to its usual fervor; but, in general, he soon relapses
into a frigid apathy; affects an ostentatiously severe
impartiality; notes all the faults of Christians in every age
with bitter and almost malignant sarcasm; reluctantly, and with
exception and reservation, admits their claim to admiration.
This inextricable bias appears even to influence his manner of
composition. While all the other assailants of the Roman empire,
whether warlike or religious, the Goth, the Hun, the Arab, the
Tartar, Alaric and Attila, Mahomet, and Zengis, and Tamerlane,
are each introduced upon the scene almost with dramatic animation
- their progress related in a full, complete, and unbroken
narrative - the triumph of Christianity alone takes the form of a
cold and critical disquisition. The successes of barbarous
energy and brute force call forth all the consummate skill of
composition; while the moral triumphs of Christian benevolence -
the tranquil heroism of endurance, the blameless purity, the
contempt of guilty fame and of honors destructive to the human
race, which, had they assumed the proud name of philosophy, would
have been blazoned in his brightest words, because they own
religion as their principle - sink into narrow asceticism. The
glories of Christianity, in short, touch on no chord in the heart
of the writer; his imagination remains unkindled; his words,
though they maintain their stately and measured march, have
become cool, argumentative, and inanimate. Who would obscure one
hue of that gorgeous coloring in which Gibbon has invested the
dying forms of Paganism, or darken one paragraph in his splendid
view of the rise and progress of Mahometanism? But who would not
have wished that the same equal justice had been done to
Christianity; that its real character and deeply penetrating
influence had been traced with the same philosophical sagacity,
and represented with more sober, as would become its quiet
course, and perhaps less picturesque, but still with lively and
attractive, descriptiveness? He might have thrown aside, with
the same scorn, the mass of ecclesiastical fiction which envelops
the early history of the church, stripped off the legendary
romance, and brought out the facts in their primitive nakedness
and simplicity - if he had but allowed those facts the benefit of
the glowing eloquence which he denied to them alone. He might
have annihilated the whole fabric of post-apostolic miracles, if
he had left uninjured by sarcastic insinuation those of the New
Testament; he might have cashiered, with Dodwell, the whole host
of martyrs, which owe their existence to the prodigal invention
of later days, had he but bestowed fair room, and dwelt with his
ordinary energy on the sufferings of the genuine witnesses to the
truth of Christianity, the Polycarps, or the martyrs of Vienne.
And indeed, if, after all, the view of the early progress of
Christianity be melancholy and humiliating we must beware lest we
charge the whole of this on the infidelity of the historian. It
is idle, it is disingenuous, to deny or to dissemble the early
depravations of Christianity, its gradual but rapid departure
from its primitive simplicity and purity, still more, from its
spirit of universal love. It may be no unsalutary lesson to the
Christian world, that this silent, this unavoidable, perhaps, yet
fatal change shall have been drawn by an impartial, or even an
hostile hand. The Christianity of every age may take warning,
lest by its own narrow views, its want of wisdom, and its want of
charity, it give the same advantage to the future unfriendly
historian, and disparage the cause of true religion.

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