Gibbons history of the decline and fall6/19/2023 Gibbon’s mastery of sources, his literary genius and his triumphant demonstration that the sweep of human history might indeed be explicated by the various arts of scholarship received generous acknowledgement. Rather like Aetius rallying the armies of the West against Attila, his defence was a rage against the dying of the light. It was no longer taken for granted by most people that the fall of Rome’s empire was indeed, as Gibbon had claimed, ‘the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind’.Īll this duly granted, Porter then set about making the best case for The Decline and Fall that he could. The grip of classical education had faded the hold of religion, too. Equally, its themes lacked the awesome resonance that they had possessed for its original readers. Its author had ‘founded no historical school, bred no generations of disciples, and pioneered no dramatic breakthroughs in historical method’. Not only that, but it was doubly antiquated. Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88), Porter acknowledged, was vastly too corpulent for 20th-century tastes. What Geoffrey Elton said of Gibbon is now true of Elton himself: ‘Hardly anyone reads any longer.’ Roy Porter, writing in 1986 and quoting Elton’s dismissive judgement, did not think to dispute it. Even the most cutting-edge scholarship, after all, will end up blunted by the years. It is rare for the reputation of a historian, once it has sunk into obscurity, ever to recover its lustre.
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