These extracts conclude with Gibbon's "General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West," which in two paragraphs gives the whole completed cycle of Roman history. "The decline of Rome," he finds, "was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness." (2536 words)
* * *
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 frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient
renown and disciplined valour. The gentle, but powerful influence of laws and
manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their 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, and devolved on the emperors all
the executive powers of government. During a happy period of more than fourscore years [A.D. 98-180], the
public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva,
Trajan, Hadrian, and the two Antonines. It is the design of this, and of the
two succeeding chapters, to describe the prosperous condition of their empire;
and afterwards, from the death of Marcus Antoninus, to deduce the most
important circumstances of its decline and fall; a revolution which will ever
be remembered, and is still felt by the nations of the earth.
The principal conquests of the Romans were achieved under the
republic; and the emperors, for the most part, were satisfied with preserving
those dominions which had been acquired by the policy of the senate, the active
emulation of the consuls, and the martial enthusiasm of the people. The seven
first centuries were filled with a rapid succession of triumphs; but it was
reserved for Augustus, to relinquish the ambitious design of subduing the whole
earth, and to introduce a spirit of moderation into the public councils.
Inclined to peace by his temper and situation, it was easy for him to discover,
that Rome, in her present exalted situation, had much less to hope than to fear
from the chance of arms; and that, in the prosecution of remote wars, the
under-taking became every day more difficult, the event more doubtful, and the
possession more precarious, and less beneficial. The experience of Augustus
added weight to these salutary reflections, and effectually convinced him,
that, by the prudent vigour of his counsels, it would be easy to secure every
concession, which the safety or the dignity of Rome might require from the most
formidable barbarians. Instead of exposing his person and his legions to the
arrows of the Parthians, he obtained, by an honourable treaty, the restitution
of the standards and prisoners which had been taken in the defeat of Crassus.
His generals, in the early part of his reign, attempted the
reduction of Ethiopia and Arabia Felix. They marched near a thousand miles to
the south of the tropic; but the heat of the climate soon repelled the
invaders, and protected the unwarlike natives of those sequestered regions.
The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expence and labour of
conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of
barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though,
on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power,
they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and
reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune. On the death of that emperor,
his testament was publicly read in the senate. He bequeathed, as a valuable
legacy to his successors, the advice of confining the empire within those
limits which Nature seemed to have placed as its permanent bulwarks and
boundaries; on the west the Atlantic ocean; the Rhine and Danube on the north;
the Euphrates on the east; and towards the south, the sandy deserts of Arabia
and Africa.
Happily for the repose of mankind, the moderate system recommended by the wisdom of Augustus, was adopted by the fears and
vices of his immediate successors. (31-32)
Such was the state of the Roman frontiers, and such the maxims
of Imperial policy from the death of Augustus to the accession of Trajan. That
virtuous and active prince had received the education of a soldier, and
possessed the talents of a general. The peaceful system of his predecessors was
interrupted by scenes of war and conquest; and the legions, after a long
interval, beheld a military emperor at their head. . . . Trajan was ambitious
of fame; and as long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause
on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst of military glory
will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters. The praises of Alexander,
transmitted by a succession of poets and historians, had kindled a dangerous
emulation in the mind of Trajan. Like him the Roman emperor undertook an
expedition against the nations of the east, but he lamented with a sigh, that
his advanced age scarcely left him any hopes of equaling the renown of the son
of Philip. Yet the success of Trajan, however transient, was rapid and
specious. The degenerate Parthians, broken by intestine discord, fled before
his arms. He descended the river Tigris in triumph, from the mountains of
Armenia to the Persian gulph. He enjoyed the honour of being the first, as he
was the last, of the Roman generals, who ever navigated that remote sea. His
fleets ravaged the coasts of Arabia; and Trajan vainly flattered himself that
he was approaching towards the confines of India. Every day the astonished
senate received the intelligence of new names and new nations, that
acknowledged his sway. . . . But the
death of Trajan soon clouded the splendid prospect; and it was justly to be
dreaded, that so many distant nations would throw off the unaccustomed yoke,
when they were no longer restrained by the powerful hand which had imposed it.
(35-36)
Notwithstanding this difference in their personal conduct, the
general system of Augustus was equally adopted and uniformly pursued by Hadrian
and by the two Antonines. They persisted in the design of maintaining the
dignity of the empire, without attempting to enlarge its limits. By every
honourable expedient they invited the friendship of the barbarians; and
endeavoured to convince mankind, that the Roman power, raised above the
temptation of conquest, was actuated only by the love of order and justice.
During a long period of forty-three years their virtuous labours were crowned
with success; and if we except a few slight hostilities that served to exercise
the legions of the frontier, the reigns of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius offer the
fair prospect of universal peace. The Roman name was revered among the most
remote nations of the earth. The fiercest barbarians frequently submitted their
differences to the arbitration of the emperor; and we are informed by a
cotemporary historian, that he had seen ambassadors who were refused the honour
which they came to solicit, of being admitted into the rank of subjects.
The terror of the Roman arms added weight and dignity to the
moderation of the emperors. They preserved peace by a constant preparation for
war; and while justice regulated their conduct, they announced to the nations
on their confines, that they were as little disposed to endure, as to offer an
injury. (37-38)
* * *
The tender respect of Augustus for a free constitution which he had destroyed, can only be explained by an attentive consideration of the character of that subtle tyrant. A cool head, an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside. With the same hand, and probably with the same temper, he signed the proscription of Cicero, and the pardon of Cinna. His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world. When he framed the artful system of the Imperial authority, his moderation was inspired by his fears. He wished to deceive the people by an image of civil liberty, and the armies by an image of civil government.
The death of Caesar was ever before his eyes. He had lavished
wealth and honours on his adherents; but the most favoured friends of his uncle
were in the number of the conspirators. The fidelity of the legions might
defend his authority against open rebellion; but their vigilance could not
secure his person from the dagger of a determined republican; and the Romans,
who revered the memory of Brutus, would applaud the imitation of his virtue. Caesar
had provoked his fate, as much by the ostentation of his power, as by his power
itself. The consul or the tribune might have reigned in peace. The title of king
had armed the Romans against his life. Augustus was sensible that mankind is
governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate and
people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured, that
they still enjoyed their ancient freedom. A feeble senate and enervated people
cheerfully acquiesced in the pleasing illusion, as long as it was supported by
the virtue, or by even the prudence, of the successors of Augustus. It was a
motive of self-preservation, not a principle of liberty, that animated the
conspirators against Caligula, Nero, and Domitian. They attacked the person of
the tyrant, without aiming their blow at the authority of the emperor. (96-97)
In the life of Augustus, we behold the tyrant of the
republic, converted, almost by imperceptible degrees, into the father of his
country and of human kind. In that of Constantine, we may contemplate a hero,
who had so long inspired his subjects with love, and his enemies with terror,
degenerating into a cruel and dissolute monarch, corrupted by his fortune, or
raised by conquest above the necessity of dissimulation. The general peace
which he maintained during the last fourteen years of his reign, was a period
of apparent splendor rather than of real prosperity; and the old age of
Constantine was disgraced by the opposite yet reconcileable vices of
rapaciousness and prodigality. (644)
* * *
“General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the
West”
The Greeks, after their country had been reduced into a
province, imputed the triumphs of Rome, not to the merit, but to the fortune,
of the republic. The inconstant goddess, who so blindly distributes and resumes
her favours, had now consented (such was the language of envious flattery) to resign her wings, to descend from her globe, and to fix her firm and
immutable throne on the banks of the Tiber [Plutarch]. A wiser Greek, who has composed,
with a philosophic spirit, the memorable history of his own times [Polybius],
deprived his countrymen of this vain and delusive comfort by opening to their
view the deep foundations of the greatness of Rome. The fidelity of the
citizens to each other, and to the state, was confirmed by the habits of education
and the prejudices of religion. Honour, as well as virtue, was the principle of
the republic; the ambitious citizens laboured to deserve the solemn glories of
a triumph; and the ardour of the Roman youth was kindled into active emulation,
as often as they beheld the domestic images of their ancestors. The temperate
struggles of the patricians and plebeians had finally established the firm and
equal balance of the constitution; which united the freedom of popular
assemblies with the authority and wisdom of a senate and the executive powers
of a regal magistrate. When the consul displayed the standard of the republic,
each citizen bound himself, by the obligation of an oath, to draw his sword in
the cause of his country, till he had discharged the sacred duty by a military
service of ten years. This wise institution continually poured into the field
the rising generations of freemen and soldiers; and their numbers were
reinforced by the warlike and populous states of Italy, who, after a brave
resistance, had yielded to the valour, and embraced the alliance, of the
Romans. The sage historian, who excited the virtue of the younger Scipio and
beheld the ruin of Carthage, has accurately described their military system;
their levies, arms, exercises, subordination, marches, encampments; and the
invincible legion, superior in active strength to the Macedonian phalanx of
Philip and Alexander. {Gibbon’s note: While Carthage was in flames, Scipio
repeated two lines of the Iliad,
which express the destruction of Troy, acknowledging to Polybius, his friend
and preceptor that, while he recollected the vicissitudes of human affairs, he
inwardly applied them to the future calamities of Rome.} From these
institutions of peace and war, Polybius has deduced the spirit and success of a
people incapable of fear and impatient of repose. The ambitious design of
conquest, which might have been defeated by the seasonable conspiracy of
mankind, was attempted and achieved; and the perpetual violation of justice was
maintained by the political virtues of prudence and courage. The arms of the
republic, sometimes vanquished in battle, always victorious in war, advanced
with rapid steps to the Euphrates, the Danube, the Rhine, and the Ocean; and
the images of gold, or silver, or brass, that might serve to represent the nations
and their kings, were successively broken by the iron monarchy of Rome.
The rise of a city, which swelled into an empire, may
deserve, as a singular prodigy, the reflection of a philosophic mind. But the
decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness.
Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied
with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident had removed the
artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own
weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and, instead of inquiring
why the Roman empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had
subsisted so long. The victorious legions, who, in distant wars, acquired the
vices of strangers and mercenaries, first oppressed the freedom of the
republic, and afterwards violated the majesty of the purple. The emperors,
anxious for their personal safety and the public peace, were reduced to the
base expedient of corrupting the discipline which rendered them alike
formidable to their sovereign and to the enemy; the vigour of the military
government was relaxed, and finally dissolved, by the partial institutions of
Constantine; and the Roman world was overwhelmed by a deluge of Barbarians.
The decay of Rome has been frequently ascribed to the
translation of the seat of empire; but this history has already shewn that the
powers of government were divided rather than removed. The throne of
Constantinople was erected in the East; while the West was still possessed by a
series of emperors who held their residence in Italy and claimed their equal
inheritance of the legions and provinces. This dangerous novelty impaired the
strength, and fomented the vices, of a double reign; the instruments of an
oppressive and arbitrary system were multiplied; and a vain emulation of
luxury, not of merit, was introduced and supported between the degenerate
successors of Theodosius. Extreme distress, which unites the virtue of a free
people, embitters the factions of a declining monarchy. (ch. 38)
***
The “General
Observations” are from the 1906 edition by J.B. Bury, available at the Online
Library of Liberty. The preceding selections are from the Penguin edition
edited by David Womersley, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, Volume I the First (1776) and Volume the Second (1781) (New York, 1994). This is the new standard
edition and is especially valuable for Womersley’s 100 page introduction to
Gibbon’s life and thought. Map from The New Times Atlas of World History, edited by Geoffrey Barraclough (Hammond, 1979), 86.
Portrait of Gibbon by Sir Joshua Reynolds, from Wikipedia
