Books that Matter: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Grounding one's understanding of Gibbon's masterpiece; why Rome is so important to Gibbon and his readers; what makes the periodic style so essential to the book's accessibility; why people should want to read it in the 21st century.

Following Edward Gibbon's intellectual development; exploring his childhood obsession with reading, his military service, his disappointed love, his social circles, his personal politics and his life as a gentleman scholar of leisure.

Professor Damrosch reviews early Roman history, exploring the empire's important provinces, the excessive influence of the Roman military, the emergence of imperial dictatorship and other facts Gibbon's original readers took for granted.

Exploring Gibbon's understanding of the role of the historian; discovering his thoughts about Hume, Voltaire and other Enlightenment writers; learning how he revolutionizes the use of extensive documentation in his work.

Exploring the rule of the Antonines; from Nerva to Hadrian to Marcus Aurelius, these five good emperors rule the only period of history in which the happiness of the great people is the sole object of government.

Discovering the horrific reigns of emperors like Commodus, Caracalla, and Elagabalus; Gibbon illustrates the hidden poison by which one-man rule produced a vicious cycle of incompetent, power-corrupt emperors.

Following the first assaults of the Goths, who eventually bring the empire to its knees; discovering the emperors Diocletian and Constantine, who radically reshape the structure of the Roman Empire.

Exploring Gibbon's dangerous sociological treatment of Christianity, the Decline and Fall documents the human causes behind Christianity's evolution into the dominant ideology of the ancient world, rather than focusing on divine providence.

Gibbon takes up five causes for Christianity's success, including not only the promise of a future life in heaven but also unprecedented organizational ability; Gibbon leaves out any imaginative empathy with religion.

Discovering Gibbon's thoughts on the transferring of the capital to Constantinople, and on Constantine's famous vision of the cross; exploring why he gives so much attention to theological controversies.

Discovering how paganism in the empire doesn't go down without a fight; Julian the Apostate tries to reinstate the Olympian gods; learning about Julian's death during an ill-advised military campaign, and afterward pushback from the Christians.

In the wake of Julian's death, confusion ensues; there's an increase in barbarian threats from Britain, Germany, the Middle East, the Danube and North Africa; the "chaste and temperate" rule of Theodosius; the Christian veneration of saints' relics.

With Rome's fracture into eastern and western camps, the empire's decline begins to get complicated; examining cataclysmic events including the sack of Rome in 410 A.D. and the loss of North Africa to the Vandals.

Professor Damrosch explores the successive waves of barbarian invaders, beginning with the assault of the Huns, led by Attila; Gibbon's insights on the development of barbarian kingdoms and his biased views on the growth of monasticism.

Exploring the rule of the Gothic king, Theodoric and Rome's eastern emperor, Justinian; examining Constantinople's massive building program including the Hagia Sophia; the codification of Roman Law.

Byzantium in the East persists for another nine centuries, after the fall of the empire in the West; the consolidation of France under Clovis, the establishment of the papacy as the center of Christendom and a new swarm of religious heresies.

An exploration of historical moments like the reign of Charlemagne and the Comnenian dynasty; delving into implications of Gibbon's "great man" approach to history from the 7th to 11th centuries.

Analyzing Gibbon's account of the rise of Islam, that emphasizes how the religion arrived at a fortunate historical moment when it faced only weak opposition from surrounding powers; he also pays warm tribute to Muhammad's qualities of character.

Surveying the ever-shrinking form of the Byzantine Empire, early Russians, Norman conquests in the Mediterranean, and the expanding dominion of the Turks.

Gibbon's account of the Crusades focuses on the way religion has been used to rationalize European military and territorial aggression, exploring what he has to say about the rivalry of Richard the Lionheart and Saladin.

Unpacking the life of Genghis Khan and the dawn of the Ottoman Empire; central to this is another of Gibbon's charismatic figures, Tamerlane; ending with Gibbon's account of the discovery of gunpowder, which would forever change history.

Chronicling the final defeat of Byzantium; exploring the exiled papal court at Avignon, Mahomet the Second's capture of Constantinople and the Great Schism from 1378 to 1417.

Exploring some of Gibbon's assumptions about the darkness and confusion of medieval Europe; tracing his visit to the physical ruins of Rome that inspired his final thoughts on the collapse of the empire and helped to bring.

Understanding why some historians reject the term 'fall' in favor of 'transformation', together with the insistence by recent specialists that there truly was a fall; analyzing three major blind spots Gibbon exhibits in his history.