دانلود کتاب Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire-a One-Volume Abridgement By D. M. Low

While Gibbon’s literary brilliance and ironic power are always praised, it should not be forgotten that The Decline and Fall remains, despite subsequent research, a masterly history, a bridge, as Mme. Necker said, between the ancient and modern worlds. The present selections do justice to both aspects of Gibbon’s greatness.

Gibbon divided his volumes equally between the three centuries from Marcus Aurelius to the fall of the West, and the thousand years that followed to the capture of Constantinople. In this abridgement greater space is given to the first and, historically speaking, most valuable half. Even a decline and fall in history must be progressive, and the story therefore also unfolds through exciting vicissitudes, the evolution of absolute government from the Antonines to Diocletian and the Byzantine emperors with the courts and hierarchies that anticipate modern Europe. Gibbon’s famous treatment of Christianity is fairly represented. The most significant chapters of the second half of The Decilne and Fall have been drawn upon, and the book ends with the capture of Constantinople and the memorable picture of Rome itself in the Dawn of the Renaissance.

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