More than any other event in Western history the so-called “Decline and Fall of Rome” has been weaponized for centuries to promote a variety of social, religious, or ideological agendas. British historian Edward Gibbon (1737 - 1794) was not the first writer to popularize the concept of Rome’s “decline and fall,” but he was such a gifted stylist and diligent scholar that his influence has strongly shaped academic discourse for the past two centuries. As a good Englishman, Gibbon basically blamed the Church of Rome:

“The clergy successfully preached the doctrines of patience and pusillanimity; the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister. A large portion of public and private wealth were consecrated to the specious demands of charity and devotion, and the soldiers' pay was lavished on the useless multitudes of both sexes who could only plead the merits of abstinence and chastity. Faith, zeal, curiosity, and more earthly passions of malice and ambition kindled the flame of theological factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny, and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of the country.” – Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume IV (1788)

Edward Watts, professor of History at the University of California, San Diego, revisits this long controversy in this learned and highly readable book that should be of interest to policy analysts as well as classicists.

One of this book’s many good features is the author’s careful use of coin inscriptions to support his argument. Many boastful emperors had themselves acclaimed as RESTITVTOR ORBIS (Restorer of the World.) For Roman rulers, the coinage was an important medium of public information, particularly to communicate official ideology to the literate elite (by some estimates, about 15% of the urban population could read Latin.)

Beginning with the Roman republic in the second century BCE, Watts traces how notions of decline, decadence, and renewal shaped Rome’s bitter internal conflicts.

Most of the middle chapters (Ch. 9 - 16) are a narrative history of the Eastern Roman (“Byzantine”) empire that non-specialist readers may find tedious, but the last two chapters, “A Dangerous Idea,” and “Conclusion: Roman Decline and Fall in Contemporary America” fully live up to the book’s ambitious title.

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Note: The Eternal Decline and Fall of Rome is also available in e-editions.

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