Christianity and the Decline of Rome (AS 454)

512 pp. Edward Gibbon's celebrated history of the collapse of the Roman Empire is more than a classic; it is a tribute to the Age of Reason that produces it, a monument of accurate research and organization, an ageless masterwork still consulted and quoted by scholars nearly two decades after it was written. Volume 1 of this modern edition examines the military, political, and social factors that undermines the foundations of the Empire, and the rising tide of Christianity, which Gibbon views as a central element in the Roman decline. It is a magnificent story of a magnificent era, told with the clarity and richness of style that distinguished the best eighteenth-century litrature in general ans Gibbon's work in particular.