Decline and Fall

Extract

‘Decline and Fall’ has been a favourite heading with historians ever since the modern world undertook to chronicle the history of the ancient. It is more than a heading; it is an attitude. Gibbon first popularized it, and the phrase enjoyed a steady prosperity until the archaeologists towards the end of the last century began to redress the balance by calling in more concrete evidence than the moralizings of philosophers. Here, as in other fields, ancient history owes a great debt to Mommsen. But the old attitude has been long in dying and is not yet dead. Gibbon in envisaging the whole history of the Roman Empire from the settlement of Augustus to the coming of the Ottomans was no doubt justified in using the title he did. But his manner left no doubt that even in the days of her first princeps Rome was declining and falling hard. And his attitude is followed consciously and unconsciously by many later historians who limited their surveys to the first two or three centuries of the Empire. In schools, though it may be the fault of curricular limitations and the setters of syllabuses, it is still hard for the pupil to avoid the impression that the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome ended abruptly at 323 and 31 b.c. respectively.