Warnings From The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Note: This piece is part of a series. These are my musings of Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Again, musings. This article is looser than my others. I’m putting to paper, the best I can, the musings I had while enjoying this masterpiece.

I got warned.

A lot of chatter came my way before reading the first word of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I talk with a small circle of people, in person, about what I’m reading or going to read. I talk to a bigger circle with Twitter and my email list. In all circles, I heard a lot of warnings regarding Gibbon. I got direct and indirect warnings. The direct looked like, “I heard he was obsessed with primary sources, so why read him?” And the indirect, “Gibbon missed that lowered levels of Testosterone caused the fall of the Roman Empire, you should check out Random Person with a Largely Unread Blog featuring Flat Earth Sounding Theories on The Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Before we read some …