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the news is often determined to tell us

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that we live in uniquely critical times

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beset by political disasters and

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afflicted by terrible crises and that

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the demise of human civilization is

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surely imminent we're encouraged by the

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media to view the world and our own

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lives in Bleak apocalyptic terms

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oddly history can be powerfully

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consoling at such moments not because it

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tells us that our times are great but

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precisely because it shows us how normal

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large societal troubles actually are

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the English 18th century historian

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Edward Gibbon is particularly helpful

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with this task of bringing us to a less

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frightened perspective on what we Face

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his massive elegantly written work the

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history of the decline and fall of the

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Roman Empire covers a thousand five

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hundred years from the Pinnacle of Roman

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power around the year 180 A.D through to

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the collapse of the Western Empire to

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the final fall of its last outpost the

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city of Constantinople in 1453

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Edward Gibbon started work on the series

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of volumes around 1770 and completed the

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final book on a summer's evening in 1787

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while he was on holiday in Switzerland

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the immense story that Gibbon tells us

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moves from one disaster to another

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Century after Century there are mad

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despotic Emperors The Barbarians invade

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again and again the plans for reform

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fail the key institutions become corrupt

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the government loses control of the army

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there are plagues that last for decades

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the Harvest decline there is insane

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factionalism the economy collapses the

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Roman Forum once the heart of the Empire

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is abandoned and sheep graze among the

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ruins only Constantinople holds out

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getting weaker and weaker the vastly

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prolonged decline ends with a fall of

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that city where the people still call

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themselves Roman to Muhammad II in the

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middle of the 15th century and yet the

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world did not end the main beneficiaries

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of the demise of the last fragment of

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the empire was the city-state of Venice

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which became the most widely loved place

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on Earth

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and The Exodus of Scholars to the West

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Was pivotal in the story of the

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Renaissance and all the time in the

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centuries of decline new forces were

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developing in the background The Wild

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People of the north who the Romans so

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feared became eventually Danish interior

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designers and German intellectuals and

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Parisian socialites the picts and the

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Scots who were seen as the least

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civilized people on Earth by the Romans

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would one day renew their Capital City

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Edinburgh as an architectural homage to

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Roman culture

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the disasters are always happening on

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the surface they're what we hear about

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the gradual process of renewal and

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elevation so often escapes are noticed

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at the time

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it's nice and good to read Edward Gibbon

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late at night at the end of another day

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when the news seems unbearably grim and

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to skim through his Placid accounts of

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yet another moment of apparent

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catastrophe and think of him sitting

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learnedly in his study in the 18th

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century reflecting on disaster and yet

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being himself the obvious Heir with his

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classical prose his quiet dignity and

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his sense of balance of the very Roman

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Empire he thought he was lamenting