Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon
Edward Gibbon FRS was an English historian, writer and Member of Parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 and is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its open criticism of organized religion...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionHistorian
Date of Birth27 April 1737
military europe numbers
[A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.
party fire fields
In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
humanity church troops
The peace of the Eastern church was invaded by a swarm of fanatics [monks], incapable of fear, or reason, or humanity; and the Imperial troops acknowledged, without shame, that they were much less apprehensive of an encounter with the fiercest Barbarians.
guilt desire flesh
Pleasure and guilt are synonymous terms in the language of the monks, and they discovered, by experience, that rigid fasts, and abstemious diet, are the most effectual preservatives against the impure desires of the flesh.
clouds superstitions study
The monastic studies have tended, for the most part, to darken, rather than to dispel, the cloud of superstition.
years crowns poverty
I have somewhere heard or read the frank confession of a Benedictine abbot: "My vow of poverty has given me a hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." - I forget the consequences of his vow of chastity.
philosophy light mind
[The monks'] credulity debased and vitiated the faculties of the mind: they corrupted the evidence of history; and superstition gradually extinguished the hostile light of philosophy and science.
sex husband rome
Women [in ancient Rome] were condemned to the perpetual tutelage of parents, husbands, or guardians; a sex created to please and obey was never supposed to have attained the age of reason and experience. Such, at least, was the stern and haughty spirit of the ancient law . . .
character birth elevation
History has scarcely deigned to notice [Libius Severus's] birth, his elevation, his character, or his death.
passion men creatures
Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow-creatures, than from the convulsions of the elements.
greatness serious scene
[The] vain and transitory scenes of human greatness are unworthy of a serious thought.
sacrifice people helping
Metellus Numidicus, the censor, acknowledged to the Roman people, in a public oration, that had kind nature allowed us to exist without the help of women, we should be delivered from a very troublesome companion; and he could recommend matrimony only as the sacrifice of private pleasure to public duty.
hands law wife
In the most rigorous [Roman] laws, a wife was condemned to support a gamester, a drunkard, or a libertine, unless he were guilty of homicide, poison, or sacrilege, in which cases the marriage, as it should seem, might have been dissolved by the hand of the executioner.
age may revolution
The revolution of ages may bring round the same calamities; but ages may revolve without producing a Tacitus to describe them.