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Overview and contents
It was at the end of August 2009, twenty-eight months ago, that I started to read Gibbon's Decline and Fall, and two weeks ago that I finished it. I thought then that I could read two chapters a week, and get through the lot in nine months. In fact, I found I needed the space of a weekend without visitors or travel to read and write up each chapter ( Read more... ) -
Gibbon Chapter LXXI: The End
Read it here or here
1) Great linesIn the last days of Pope Eugenius the Fourth, two of his servants, the learned Poggius and a friend, ascended the Capitoline hill; reposed themselves among the ruins of columns and temples; and viewed from that commanding spot the wide and various prospect of desolation. The place and the object gave ample scope ( Read more... ) -
Chapter LXX: Rome from 1300 to 1590
Read it here or here.
1) Good lines
A footnote on how silly it is to have a poet laureate:8 I much doubt whether any age or court can produce a similar establishment of a stipendiary poet, who in every reign, and at all events, is bound to furnish twice a year a measure of praise and verse, such as may be sung in the chapel, and, I believe, in the ( Read more... ) -
Chapter XLIX: Rome, 1100-1300
Read it here or here.
1) Good lines ...the modern times of religious indifference are the most favourable to the peace and security of the clergy. Under the reign of superstition, they had much to hope from the ignorance, and much to fear from the violence, of mankind ( Read more... ) -
Gibbon Chapter LXVIII: The Fall of Constantinople
Read it here or here.
1) Great lines
In the main text we have the sublime: Persuasion is the resource of the feeble; and the feeble can seldom persuade: the ambassadors of the emperor attempted, without success, to divert Mahomet from the execution of his design ( Read more... ) -
Chapter LXVII: The Beginning of the End
Read it here or here.
1) Good quotesA nation ignorant of the equal benefits of liberty and law, must be awed by the flashes of arbitrary power: the cruelty of a despot will assume the character of justice; his profusion, of liberality; his obstinacy, of firmness. If the most reasonable excuse be rejected, few acts of obedience will be found ( Read more... ) -
Chapter LXVI: The Eastern Empire and the Popes
Back after several weeks off, due to travel and visitors. Read it here or here.
1) Great quotes
On why good writing can outlast physical relics:...the monuments of art may be annihilated by a single blow; but the immortal mind is renewed and multiplied by the copies of the pen...
Gibbon is sceptical about changing church doctrine on the fly:Perhaps it ( Read more... ) -
Chapter LXV: Tamerlane / Timour, and the Turks again
Read it here or here.
1) Good lines
There is an early cynical line about justification for violence: For every war, a motive of safety or revenge, of honour or zeal, of right or convenience, may be readily found in the jurisprudence of conquerors.
That ties in very neatly with the end of the chapter, which is a brilliant peroration on military ( Read more... ) -
Chapter LXIV: Genghis Khan, and the return of the Turks
Read it here or here.
0) General
This is a day or so late - I actually read through this short chapter pretty quickly on Saturday morning, but the unseasonably warm weather deterred me from writing it up until now.
1) Good lines
The global economic system: The Latin world was darkened by this cloud of savage hostility: a Russian fugitive ( Read more... ) -
Chapter LXIII: The East in the early 14th century
Read it here or here.
1) Great lines
Gibbon on meditation: The fakirs of India, and the monks of the Oriental church, were alike persuaded, that in the total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body, the purer spirit may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinion and practice of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be ( Read more... )