The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume II (Modern Library) - Hardcover

Gibbon, Edward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067960149X ISBN 13: 9780679601494

Publisher: Modern Library, 1996

Synopsis

"Gibbon is a kind of bridge that connects the ancient with the modern ages," noted Thomas Carlyle.  "And how gorgeously does it swing across the gloomy and tumultuous chasm of these barbarous centuries."  Indeed, Gibbon, the supreme historian of the Enlightenment--the illustrious scholar who envisioned history as a branch of literature--seemed almost predestined to write his monumental account of the Roman Empire's terrible self-destruction.  "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion," wrote the author in the famous epigram that summed up his towering achievement in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
"Gibbon is not merely a master of the pageant and the story; he is also the critic and the historian of the mind," said Virginia Woolf.  "Without his satire, his irreverence, his mixture of sedateness and slyness, of majesty and mobility, and above all that belief in reason which pervades the whole book and gives it unity, an implicit if unspoken message, the Decline and Fall would be the work of another man....We seem as we read him raised above the tumult and the chaos into a clear and rational air."
The second volume contains chapters twenty-seven through forty-eight of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Gibbon is a great navigator of the sea of history--the greatest whom this country, or perhaps any has produced--and his work has the majesty, the precision and the reliability of a well-built ship....Although the Decline and Fall came out [some] two hundred years ago, it is still the leading authority on its period. Macaulay and Carlyle need correcting and supplementing, but the history of Gibbon stands firm." --E.M. Forster

From the Back Cover:

"Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, has always been my cynosure...Gibbon's mind was surely the most powerful and most lucid one that has appeared so far in the whole distinguished company of Western historians...Gibbon [produced] a masterpiece of historical research, construction, and writing which had no superior in its own genre in any literature." --Arnold Toynbee

About this edition

• Publisher: Modern Library
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 067960149X
• ISBN 13: 9780679601494
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 912
• Illustrator: Piranesi Gian Battista