Gibbon

1856 · réf. 2354153 — Boston: Phillips Sampson and Company 1856. Reissue. Hard Cover. Good/No Jacket. 0x0x0. Boards lightly rubbed and soiled with some loss from corners edges and endpapers lightly foxed and smudged ink name address and date on front flyleaf of each volume pages a bit toned. Bindings tight and square. 1856 Hard Cover. An excellent edition of Edward Gibbon's magnum opus. Six hardcover volumes. 7 3/4" x 5 1/4". Original brown cloth hardcover bindings with gold spine lettering & design embossed design on front & back covers. Gibbon's complete work with notes by Rev. Milman plus a general index. "The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire a major literary achievement of the 18th century published in six volumes was written by the celebrated English historian Edward Gibbon. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings a remarkable feat for its time. Volumes II and III were published in 1781; volumes IV V VI in 1788-89. The original volumes were published as quartos a common publishing practice of the time. The books cover the period of the Roman Empire after Marcus Aurelius from just before 180 to 1453 and beyond concluding in 1590. They take as their material the behaviour and decisions that led to the decay and eventual fall of the Roman Empire in the East and West offering an explanation for why the Roman Empire fell. Gibbon is sometimes called the first 'modern historian of ancient Rome.' By virtue of its mostly objective approach and highly accurate use of reference material Gibbon's work was adopted as a model for the methodologies of 19th and 20th century historians. His pessimism and detached use of irony was common to the historical genre of his era. Although he published other books Gibbon devoted much of his life 1772-1789 to this one work. His autobiography Memoirs of My Life and Writings is devoted largely to his reflections on how the book virtually became his life. He compared the publication of each succeeding volume to a newborn child. The book is famous not only because it is extraordinarily well written but also because Gibbon offers an explanation for why the Roman Empire fell. This is one of the great historical questions and because of the relative lack of written records from the time one of the most difficult to undertake. Gibbon was not the first to theorise about this. In fact most of his ideas are directly taken from Roman moralists of the 4th and 5th centuries who wrote about it at the time; nor would he be the last; see for example Henri Pirenne's Thesis of the early 20th century. According to Gibbon the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions because of a loss of civic virtue among its citizens. They had become lazy and soft outsourcing their duties to defend their Empire to barbarian mercenaries who then became so numerous and ingrained that they were able to take over the Empire. Romans he believed had become effeminate unwilling to live a tougher 'manly' military lifestyle. In addition Gibbon pointed to Christianity. Christianity he says created a belief that a better life existed after death. This fostered indifference to the present among Roman citizens thus sapping their desire to sacrifice for the Empire. He also believed its comparative pacifism tended to sap the traditional Roman martial spirit. Finally like other Enlightenment thinkers Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden superstitious dark age. It was not until his own age of reason and rational thought it was believed that human history could resume its progress. Gibbon provides the reader with a glimpse of his thought process with extensive notes along the body of the text a precursor to the modern use of footnotes. Gibbon's footnotes are famous for their idiosyncrasies. They provide an entertaining moral commentary on both ancient Rome and 18th-century Great Britain. This technique enabled Gibbon to compare ancient Rome to modern times. Gibbon's work advocates a rationalist and progressive view of history. Gibbon's citations provide in-depth detail regarding his use of sources for his work on ancient Rome documents dating back to ancient Rome. The detail within his asides and his care in noting the importance of each document is a precursor to modern-day h Phillips, Sampson, and Company hardcover