The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, edited by David Womersly (Penguin, four volumes, $24.95 each)

There are many reasons to be grateful to Penguin Books for having brought out a handsome new edition of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, admirably edited by David Womersley, who has supplied a good introduction and bibliographical appendix, with other useful documents. One of these reasons is that Gibbon is the greatest historian who has written in English, and in more than one sense the earliest modern historian; a second is that he has always been considered to be and still is eminently readable; and a third is that his subject is a good deal more relevant to our own time than most of us seem to be aware.

We are well informed about Gibbon's life thanks to his autobiography--surely the best autobiography of a scholar in English, if not the best in any language --and to diaries of great interest. Born in 1737, he was the son of a fairly well-to-do country gentleman, who sat in Parliament for some years. At the age of 15 he went up to Oxford, just at the time when that' university was at the lowest point, so far as learning and education were concerned, in its long history. From his instructors he learned next to nothing, but he read widely. Trying to find his way through what he called "the dangerous mazes" of religious controversy, he "bewildered himself," as he later put it, "in the errors of the Church of Rome." His horrified father dispatched him to Lausanne, where he was placed in the charge of a Protestant clergyman, M. Pavilliard, who not only rescued him from Romanism but also introduced him to authors whose study set him on the way to his remarkable achievements.

At that time there was no other European country in which independent thinking flourished as it did in Switzerland. It was to Geneva that Piero Giannone had removed himself in order to publish his Civil History of an epoch-making work whose dogmatism caused him to be lured from his refuge by pious persons and incarcerated for life. Geneva was at that time the residence of Voltaire, whose Essai sur les Moeurs appeared in 1756. Most important for Gibbon, it was at Lausanne that in 1748 Montesquieu had published his Sur l'Esprit des Lois. Here Gibbon was perfectly placed to become acquainted with modern European historical studies and with the philosophy of the Enlightenment.

There was available at this time a large quantity of [earned historical writing. But much of it was of an antiquarian rather than a philosophical character, and it was looked down on by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, many of whom scarcely believed that historical truth could be discovered. Pierre Bayle, for instance, whose Dictionnaire Philosophique of 1697 was still influencing many, including Gibbon, affected a fashionable skepticism regarding history, called "Pyrrhonism" after the founder of the ancient Greek school of Skeptics. One sees that present-day "post-modernist" views of history are less novel than their holders think.

Montesquieu in Sur l'Esprit des Lois was the first to study the structure of human societies, examining their laws, customs, diet, medicine, social habits; he was the founder of modern sociology and anthropology. Reading Montesquieu, Gibbon saw a way of reconciling history with philosophy; his history is not a mere record of wars and politics, but a study of the culture and society not only of the Roman Empire in both the East and the West but also of all the various communities with which the Empire came into contact.

The first volume of the great work, published in 1776, begins with Marcus Aurelius, whose death in A.D. 180 ended the Antonine age, which Gibbon considered to have been the happiest period in human history. It describes the disasters of the third century and the revival of imperial strength under Diocletian (284-305), and ends in the reign of Constantine, who died in 337. The volume concludes with the two famous chapters on the Christian Church, which immediately aroused a storm of protest. In 1779 Gibbon replied devastatingly to his critics with a Vindication of the third volume is one of the merits of the edition now before me.

The second and third volumes of the work appeared together in 1781. They start with the foundation of Constantinople in the early fourth century, soon followed by the division of the Empire into western and eastern branches, and go down to the extinction of the Western Empire by the Goths in 476.

Gibbon's original plan had now been carried out, but he decided to continue the history of the Byzantine Empire down to its extinction by the Turks in 1453; in 1788 he brought out the fourth, fifth, and sixth volumes. The fifth described the Gothic kingdom in Italy and told how in the sixth century Justinian managed to reconquer that country, only for the Empire to lose it again through the invasion of the Lombards, and how in the seventh century Heraclius defeated the formidable Persian Kingdom, only for his work to be undone by the invasion of the Arabs. The fifth volume includes the famous chapters on Mohammed and the rise of Islam; later come the rise of the Slavs, the activities of Saracens and Normans in Italy and Sicily, and the desperate struggle with the Seljuk Turks. The sixth volume tells the story of the Crusades, with the brave revival of the Empire after the thuggish Crusaders' treacherous attack upon their hosts, and its final destruction by the Turks.

Gibbon's mastery of the sources available for the subject of his work is amazing. Apart from historical and other literature, he had an expert knowledge of Roman law and an acquaintance with the Fathers of the Church, Church history, and other Christian literature that no clergyman could rival. Politically correct persons who suppose Gibbon to have cared only about Greece and Rome will get a rude shock if they actually read him; they will discover an astonishing knowledge of many different cultures.

From the first the book was enormously successful with the reading public; Gibbon writes with clarity, wit, and charm. It is a wonderful book to drop into at any place; I particularly recommend the chapters on the Church, the reign of Justinian, and the beginnings of Islam. The young Winston Churchill, in a cavalry regiment in India, read it right through, and founded his own style on that of Gibbon.

Gibbon's subject is by no means irrelevant to the problems of our own time. The main cause of the Empire's decline was the incursion of barbarians. They came from outside; but we are making barbarians of our own.

Mr. Lloyd-Jones was formerly Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford.