History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2
1781
History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2
1781
Volume 2 of Gibbon's monumental history traces the Roman Empire from its zenith under the Five Good Emperors to the precipice of the Third Century Crisis. Here is the empire at its most prosperous, most civilized, most rationally governed - and here, too, Gibbon begins to trace the fault lines that would eventually shatter it. We witness the philosophical Marcus Aurelius ruling with wisdom while the legions proclaim his unstable son Commodus emperor, setting in motion a century of civil war, fragmentation, and military anarchy. Gibbon's genius lies in his patient dissection of how an empire that seemed eternal - with its roads, its aqueducts, its sophisticated bureaucracy - could consume itself from within. This volume captures the hinge moment of Western history: the transition from the ancient world as it had been to the chaotic medieval future that would emerge from its collapse. Gibbon writes with the cool detachment of an 18th-century rationalist sifting evidence, yet his prose carries a tragic grandeur befitting the subject. He was the first historian to treat the fall not as divine punishment or moral decay, but as a problem to be understood through evidence and cause-and-effect.
Editions
X-Ray
“The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful.””
— Edward Gibbon
“The most worthless of mankind are not afraid to condemn in others the same disorders which they allow in themselves; and can readily discover some nice difference in age, character, or station, to justify the partial distinction.””
— Edward Gibbon
“Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.””
— Edward Gibbon
“The policy of the emperors and the senate, as far as it concerned religion, was happily seconded by the reflections of the enlightened, and by the habits of the superstitious, part of their subjects. The various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful. And thus toleration produced not only mutual indulgence, but even religious concord.””
— Edward Gibbon
“War, in its fairest form, implies a perpetual violation of humanity and justice.””
— Edward Gibbon
“The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on 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.””
— Edward Gibbon
“The army is the only order of men sufficiently united to concur in the same sentiments, and powerful enough to impose them on the rest of their fellow-citizens; but the temper of soldiers, habituated at once to violence and to slavery, renders them very unfit guardians of a legal, or even a civil constitution.””
— Edward Gibbon
“Edward Gibbon, in his classic work on the fall of the Roman Empire, describes the Roman era's declension as a place where "bizarreness masqueraded as creativity.””
— Edward Gibbon
“The ascent to greatness, however steep and dangerous, may entertain an active spirit with the consciousness and exercise of its own power: but the possession of a throne could never yet afford a lasting satisfaction to an ambitious mind.””
— Edward Gibbon
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-volume-2-58488f8a-a9a4-4e6a-81cd-72cc5cb103a9"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2 by Edward Gibbon free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-volume-2-58488f8a-a9a4-4e6a-81cd-72cc5cb103a9)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-volume-2-58488f8a-a9a4-4e6a-81cd-72cc5cb103a9][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2 by Edward Gibbon free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-volume-2-58488f8a-a9a4-4e6a-81cd-72cc5cb103a9Cite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Gibbon, Edward. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2. Lex, lex-books.com/book/history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-volume-2-58488f8a-a9a4-4e6a-81cd-72cc5cb103a9.Gibbon, E. (1781). History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-volume-2-58488f8a-a9a4-4e6a-81cd-72cc5cb103a9Gibbon, Edward. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire — Volume 2. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/history-of-the-decline-and-fall-of-the-roman-empire-volume-2-58488f8a-a9a4-4e6a-81cd-72cc5cb103a9.
