Gibbon employs historical determinism where he narrates the decline of Rome from a moral perspective where Rome's failure to follow natural law and natural rights was the antecedent conditions leading to the moral degeneration, economic collapse and ultimate fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Rome fell in 476 A.D.) and Eastern Empire (Constantinople fell in 1453). Published in six volumes, the books chronicle all of the historic epochs of the Roman Empire after death of the Philosopher-Emperor Marcus Aurelius, from just before 180 A.D. That seems to be, if you will, a natural law – that empires can grow to a certain place and then they implode.Įdward Gibbon's The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-89), is the singular literary triumph of the 18th century. History.is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortune of mankind.Ĭollapse has happened to every empire in human history.
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