Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

1776

The first volume of Edward Gibbon's vast history appeared in London. He blamed Rome's fall on Christianity with Enlightenment irony so refined it took readers a page to notice. The prose was Augustan; the footnotes were wicked. Six volumes would eventually arrive, an entire civilization dissected over dinner. It remains the most widely read work of eighteenth-century history and a monument of English prose style.