Finished The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Vol 1)

Some Notes

Firstly, I don't know why but I assumed the tone of the book would be reverential, nostalgic. I had in mind someone reminiscing about the grandeur that was Rome while detailing, with some sadness, its follies and setbacks.

How silly of me. Gibbon is scathing and patronizing as only the British can be. He condescends without, in that original sense of the word, doing any descending at all. Sometimes his wryness is laughingly funny. It helps to read him aloud, to get a sense of his voice, which is true for most writing from a different time period.

He’s also consummate and ceremonious. He also writes with a precision of thought and sense for grammatical structure that is a lost but vital art. His parallelisms, his hypotaxis, his explanatios and exordiums. He is a writer in full control of his ideas.

And like the great historians of old, like Tacitus and Plutarch, he is interested in how human nature shapes history, how character informs fate. His exemplums are drawn from that carousel of emperors of the first three centuries of Imperial Roman history. He has much to say about tyrants, and of the diseases that infect both empires and the human soul. Of the first Imperator he says:

“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.”

Augustus’s undermining of the institutions of the republic is the first small domino that will eventually cause the giant one to fall.

"But whilst he thus restored the dignity, he destroyed the independence of the senate. The principles of a free constitution are irrecoverably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive."

As authority consolidates, its center of mass grows denser, and the allure of its power harder to resist. It invites the corrupt into its orbit until nothing good can escape from its gravity. Except for the “five good emperors” (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines) we see an unbroken line of tyranny and debasement, which Gibbon at times cannot help but find the comedy in, so dismal is the whole affair.

“It was easier to vanquish the Goths than to eradicate the public vices; yet even in the first of these enterprises Decius lost his army and his life.”

(The terseness, the juxtaposition! Brilliant comedic writing.)

The dissolution of the law gives permission for both ruler and subject to indulge in vice and cater to self-interest.

"In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardour of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity."

Little can be done once the snowball has gotten rolling, even if there comes along some well-meaning politician or general. They all, by diverse means, come to the same ignominious end.

“Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave.”

The Imperial government devolves into military juntas vying for power, and for awhile de facto leadership falls to the Praetorian Guard, the elite city soldiers. They decide, by the point of a blade, who should sit on the throne, and oftentimes dispatch sovereigns just as quickly as they elevate them.

After murdering Pertinax, they even put the emperorship up for auction to the highest bidder. The man who buys it, Didius Julianus, rules for just 66 days before he’s murdered, and becomes one of five emperors to hold the title in a single year.

Of the sale of the throne Gibbon says:

“He [Julianus] had reason to tremble. On the throne of the world he found himself without a friend, and even without an adherent. The guards themselves were ashamed of the prince whom their avarice had persuaded them to accept; nor was there a citizen who did not consider his elevation with horror, as the last insult on the Roman name.”

Pandering to military power is a running theme throughout the first volume. Yet another institution that succumbs to gigantism and rot.

"The legions, uninflamed by party zeal, were allured into civil war by liberal donatives, and still more liberal promises.”

But of course, what recourse is there to anything else but “might makes right” when the laws have been abandoned and the sanctity of the highest office so thoroughly debased?

Gibbon contrasts the ethos of the Roman military at that time with the civil wars of Modern Europe:

"They have generally been justified by some principle, or, at least, coloured by some pretext, of religion, freedom, or loyalty. [...] The troops fought like men interested in a decision of the quarrel [...] But the Romans, after the fall of the republic, combated only for the choice of masters. Under the standard of a popular candidate for empire, a few enlisted from affection, some from fear, many from interest, none from principle."

And there’s no shortage of masters. At one point nineteen different men claim the title of emperor. Here even Gibbon seems overwhelmed, and his scope broadens to tragic proportions.

“The rapid and perpetual transitions from the cottage to the throne, and from the throne to the grave, might have amused an indifferent philosopher; were it possible for a philosopher to remain indifferent amidst the general calamities of human kind. The election of these precarious emperors, their power and their death, were equally destructive to their subjects and adherents. The price of their fatal elevation was instantly discharged to the troops, by an immense donative, drawn from the bowels of the exhausted people. However virtuous was their character, however pure their intentions, they found themselves reduced to the hard necessity of supporting their usurpation by frequent acts of rapine and cruelty. When they fell, they involved armies and provinces in their fall.”

Volume I ends with the ascension of Constantine and the foreshadowing of a new Christian Empire to come. The pagan, Roman one will pass away into something new. It must, rotten as it’s become beyond all recognition.

One passage of note at the end is Gibbon’s comment on the arch Constantine erects for his victory over Maxentius. It’s one of the rare moments of sentimentality we get from Gibbon, when he considers how degraded the arts in that time have become.

“The triumphal arch of Constantine still remains a melancholy proof of the decline of the arts, and a singular testimony of the meanest vanity. As it was not possible to find in the capital of the empire a sculptor who was capable of adorning that public monument, the arch of Trajan, without any respect either for his memory or for the rules of propriety, was stripped of its most elegant figures. The difference of times and persons, of actions and characters, was totally disregarded. The Parthian captives appear prostrate at the feet of a prince who never carried his arms beyond the Euphrates; and curious antiquarians can still discover the head of Trajan on the trophies of Constantine. The new ornaments which it was necessary to introduce between the vacancies of ancient sculpture are executed in the rudest and most unskilful [sic] manner.”

It’s fitting that Gibbon should close Volume I with a discussion of Christianity. Rome cannot keep as it is. There must be reformation, there must be redemption. The whole society is desperate for salvation of any kind. But Gibbon here is not too hopeful.

“The decline of ancient prejudice exposed a very numerous portion of human kind to the danger of a painful and comfortless situation. A state of scepticism and suspense may amuse a few inquisitive minds. But the practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision. […] So urgent on the vulgar is the necessity of believing, that the fall of any system of mythology will most probably be succeeded by the introduction of some other mode of superstition.”

So much, then, for Volume I.