The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

On January 2nd, 2023, I began reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. I finished it on the afternoon of June 20th, 2023. A total of 170 days. A few ticks over five and a half months. The total work is 3,277 pages (that includes the superb 107-page introduction from Penguin Classics). I read every day. I almost always get at least an hour of reading in each day, but I aim for four hours. Some days I get it, some days I may only get a half hour. For those 170 days, the only book I read was Gibbon.

The work was an undertaking. Yet it gifted an unforgettable intellectual experience. I never felt bored; I never felt it a slog. I never expected I would enjoy spending so much time with one author and on one topic; I never expected, a few months after finishing Gibbon, that the Roman Empire would go viral on social media. Various clips on TikTok and Twitter portrayed women in a state of shock upon learning how men think of nothing but the Roman Empire.…