OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE BY EDWARD GIBBON EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION, NOTES, AND APPENDICES BY J. B. BURY, D.LITT., LL.D. CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE IMPERIAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ST. PETERSBURG IN SEVEN VOLUMES VOLUME I WITH TWENTY ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAP NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PREFATORY NOTE OR this edition of the Decline and Fall the Notes and Appendices which I added to my former edition (1896-1900) will be revised, and the Maps improved. In the first volume more changes have been made than will be necessary in its successors. While the Introduction has been abridged, a large number of new Notes have been inserted, and the Appendix has been expanded, and in many parts rewritten. The illustrations, which are a new feature, have been selected and procured by Mr. O. M. Dalton, of the British Museum. CAMBRIDGE J. B. B. G INTRODUCTION BY THE EDITOR IBBON is one of those few writers who hold as high a place in the history of literature as in the roll of great historians. He concerns us here as an historian; our business is to consider how far the view which he has presented of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire can be accepted as faithful to the facts, and in what respects it needs correction in the light of discoveries which have been made since he wrote. But the fact that his work, composed more than a hundred years ago, is still successful with the general circle of educated people, and has not gone the way of Hume and Robertson, whom we laud as "classics" and leave on the cold shelves, is due to the singularly happy union of the historian and the man of letters. Gibbon thus ranks with Thucydides and Tacitus, and is perhaps the clearest example that brilliance of style and accuracy of statement are perfectly compatible in an historian. of the Decline and Fall But Gibbon has his place in literature not only as the The moral stylist, who never lays aside his toga when he takes up his pen, Deli but as the expounder of a large and striking idea in a sphere of intense interest to mankind, and as a powerful representative of certain tendencies of his age. The guiding idea or "moral " of his history is briefly stated in his epigram: "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion". In other J words, the historical development of human societies, since the second century after Christ, was a retrogression (according to ordinary views of "progress"), for which Christianity was mainly to blame. |