Enough writers I respect mention it, so I started reading “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, by Edward Gibbon. The title is not the Rise and Fall, it is the Decline and Fall, down hill all the way. And it is not a book. The original printing is a volume of books a yard long. Interestingly, the Google, Gutenberg and other electronic editions are poorly prepared. While in Ann Arbor, I could not afford an original printing, but I happened on the Great Books double volume. It appears to be the original text, but has very helpful maps and a great timeline in the index.
You hear a grand eloquent tone, re-meaning of words, and the sentencing. It is such a pleasure, I often read sentences out loud. I imagine James Mason intonating in his airy reserved voice:
In the second century of the Christian Aera, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.
In writing about the principle four hundred year decline, Gibbon chronicles the rule of the occasionally good, but mostly snowballing effect of corruption of rulers, largely tyrannical emperors and their hideous children. The variations of decline include powerfully flawed characters, a maniac laboratory of runs at governance, jealous rivalries that divide the land, murder as a way to power, locust-like riots that leave empty thrones; but the continued root cause is no established rule of law as the unmanageable and immoral military rules by terror. It is this repeated pattern of the gifted ambitious honorable soldier who learns the way to become a corrupt powerful Praetorian, to lead military attacks on Rome that destroy any possible hope of a sustainable Roman civilization. Occupation after the Capitol victory surrounds one with the throngs of suspicious and envious defeated. And they all get their revenge. Rome’s own military divides the nation, generation after generation. You watch over generations as an originally vigorous productive people succumb to the heavy corrupt rulings that convert cultural production to a national method of ownership either through forcible theft or official demands for tribute and taxation.
Gibbon produced the Decline in 1776. He sat in the English Parliament neutral on the American Revolution. You cannot help but reflect that he wrote about the character failures of men and women, the government, the economy, the military as suggestions to the ruling King as a parenthetical to the declining British Empire. If you look at the great lessons of history we see what happens to a civilization that mixes military and State (Rome), church and State (Western Europe). You have to wonder if the mix of business and State (United States) is destined to fail. For when one complex overpowers and dictates government, the civilization is certainly stunted and may not long endure.
The Decline and Fall is a TV Show Sitcom if ever there were a premise for one. The stories are amazing stories. The cast is bizarre. Their character and actions are interesting. Does anyone want to watch generations of ambition and pitiful failure? Almost a morality play per emperor and his family. Roman ruling families transcend the dysfunctionality, idiocy and bawdiness of any of the show in the Television kingdom. With such an onslaught of devastation it is hard to rise above it all to know where mankind must go next.
Gibbon often has this Highlights for Children, Goofus and Gallant, bad boy and good boy, way of characterizing the stories of obscure emperors. The personalities are richly defined and he writes in a voice that let’s you distance yourself from the action and make human conclusions. It is inspirational in an academic way.
