Word: gibbon
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...EDWARD GIBBON...
...time when the British Empire is being rent asunder, Edward Gibbon has produced an eloquent and authoritative account of the ruin of Imperial Rome. This is somewhat surprising, since Gibbon, 39, an inconspicuous Member of Parliament, has previously written only some brief essays and two minor volumes of literary criticism. Yet his new work is not mere history but high tragedy, as the course of Rome's decay is hurried forward by fools and villains, and only briefly impeded by the strivings of worthy...
...sweep of this first volume (more are to come) extends from the start of the 2nd century to Constantine's triumphant emergence from a series of civil wars in A.D. 324. With his very first unhesitant sentences, Gibbon sets the situation and foreshadows the outcome...
With the ominous words "abused," "image" and "appeared," Gibbon conveys in brief most of what had gone wrong with Rome. Several decades of relative peace in the 2nd century left the army lax and indolent. It was a time of great prosperity, and excess wealth had its customary enervating effect. But it was the lack of supporting structure behind the impressive forms of government that doomed Rome, Gibbon believes. He traces this lack to the very first Emperor, Augustus, who ruled from 27 B.C. to A.D. 14. Augustus' predecessor and adoptive father, Julius Caesar, had been assassinated...
...heaped corpse upon the earth. The sense, if that can be said to have sense which has so little sound, was to discredit the respectability of a house in Fitzroy Square. And there you see me in the mud. Shall I argue that a mind that knows not Gibbon knows not mortality? or shall I affirm that bad English and respectability are twin sisters, dear to the telegram and odious to the artist...