Gibbon, Revisited

Inspired by hiking along Hadrian’s Wall a couple months ago, I finally managed to get through Volume 1 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. (See previous post.) I don’t know if I’ll get around to the other five volumes; that’s a lot of reading.

One of the nice things about reading it on the Kindle is that it’s easy to mark and share passages, so here are some of my favorites. Some of it is just fun - sniping at the various rulers during the long downhill slide - and keeps a long and remote history from becoming too dry.

Twenty-two acknowledged concubines, and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes, attested the variety of his inclinations; and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than for ostentation.

The most distinguished merit of those two officers was their respective prowess, of the one in the combats of Bacchus, of the other in those of Venus, yet neither of them was destitute of courage and capacity, and both sustained, with honor, the august character which the fear of punishment had engaged them to assume.

Some of his darts are aimed more broadly at institutions and culture of his time (which continue, to some degree, to ours):

Of the various forms of government which have prevailed in the world, an hereditary monarchy seems to present the fairest scope for ridicule.

You can see how he got in trouble with the religious conservatives of his time:

It was their favorite opinion, that if Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived forever in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mode of vegetation might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings.

And from time to time, you run across some insight that stands out as still very relevant to the issues of today, such as the immigration debate:

The narrow policy of preserving, without any foreign mixture, the pure blood of the ancient citizens, had checked the fortune, and hastened the ruin, of Athens and Sparta. The aspiring genius of Rome sacrificed vanity to ambition, and deemed it more prudent, as well as honorable, to adopt virtue and merit for her own wheresoever they were found, among slaves or strangers, enemies or barbarians.