Lessons in Decay

THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

by EDWARD GIBBON

674 pages. Strahan and Cadell. 1 guinea.

In a time when the British Empire is being rent asunder, Edward Gibbon has produced an eloquent and authoritative account of the ruin of Imperial Rome. This is somewhat surprising, since Gibbon, 39, an inconspicuous Member of Parliament, has previously written only some brief essays and two minor volumes of literary criticism. Yet his new work is not mere history but high tragedy, as the course of Rome's decay is hurried forward by fools and villains, and only briefly impeded by the strivings of worthy men.

The sweep of this first volume (more are to come) extends from the start of the 2nd century to Constantine's triumphant emergence from a series of civil wars in A.D. 324. With his very first unhesitant sentences, Gibbon sets the situation and foreshadows the outcome:

"In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind ... [The] peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. The image of a free constitution was preserved with decent reverence; the Roman senate appeared to possess the sovereign authority..."

With the ominous words "abused," "image" and "appeared," Gibbon conveys in brief most of what had gone wrong with Rome. Several decades of relative peace in the 2nd century left the army lax and indolent. It was a time of great prosperity, and excess wealth had its customary enervating effect. But it was the lack of supporting structure behind the impressive forms of government that doomed Rome, Gibbon believes. He traces this lack to the very first Emperor, Augustus, who ruled from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14. Augustus' predecessor and adoptive father, Julius Caesar, had been assassinated in the Senate, and this worked its effect on "a cool head, an unfeeling heart and a cowardly disposition." Augustus, Gibbon says, "wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government." Because he left the Senate its pomp and privilege as he stole its authority, the deception succeeded. It proved to be irreversible.

By the end of the 2nd century, the Senate was ready to vote for any bully or bribegiver who thrust himself forward. Among the worst of Emperors was Commodus, a vice-ridden brute who enjoyed fighting in the arena as a gladiator and was murdered by his favorite concubine and a wrestler. He was succeeded by the aged Pertinax, who tried to institute reforms, only to be murdered after 86 days by the unreformable Praetorian Guard. This garrison of swaggerers, who for a time held the real power in Rome, then insolently auctioned off the imperial throne to a wealthy Senator named Didius Julianus, who offered each guard the equivalent of some -L-200 in silver. He ruled in increasing confusion for 66 days before being beheaded.

By the middle of the 3rd century, chaos at the center had led to weakness at the outposts. The Goths became uncontrollable, and when the Emperor Valerian tried to fight off the Persians, he was captured and finally skinned and stuffed with straw. As Gibbon breaks off his story, early in the 4th century, a number of strong Emperors--Aurelian, Diocletian, Constantine--have temporarily imposed a kind of order, but it is clear that their strength is that of men, not of enduring institutions, and that the fall of the empire is inescapable. Gibbon is no moralist intent on admonisinng modern readers, and he has no interest in encouraging American Patriots in rebellion, but he does demonstrate Rome's lessons for other peoples.

Gibbon's work has been much praised in London. The first edition of 1,000 copies was sold within two weeks, and a second printing of 1,500 has just been issued. But there has been angry criticism of what Gibbon calls a "tedious but important" matter: his treatment of religion. Gibbon himself became a convert to Roman Catholicism while at Oxford, and he returned to Protestantism only at the insistence of his wealthy father. By now a thorough skeptic, he speaks of the early Christians with amused contempt. Their martyrdoms were far fewer than religious enthusiasts now claim, he says. And he maliciously derides the church's "uninterrupted succession of miraculous powers, of healing the sick and raising the dead." Gibbon sees little if any progress when the early Christians "finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross on the ruins of the Capitol." On the contrary, he believes that the Christians were too otherworldly at a time when the world's concerns badly needed attention.

Privately, the author has observed that Rome fell because of "the inevitable effect of immoderate greatness," adding that the question should not be why the empire collapsed, but how it managed to subsist for so long. Such epigrams amuse, but do not edify; for fuller explanations, the reader will have to wait for the concluding volumes of this profound and ambitious work.

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