[hc87]

Just finished reading this chapter and found this paragraph (last of Chapter XVII) apt to our current circumstances.

[Argus]

It’s good practice to re-read Gibbon from time to time.

[eleni121]

Gibbon’s fun to read but so wrong in so many ways beginning with ascribing Christianity as a cause of the “fall” - saying that Christianity caused the decline and fall of Rome by undermining the faith of the people in paganism (official religion), adn thus undermining the state apparatus which that religion supported and blessed.

So Gibbons is a fun read but so wrong and narrowly illogical in so many ways.

[earglasses]

Your link seems to go to a different section of the text. Alternatively, see page 94 of http://books.google.com/books?id=XQkUAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+History+of+The+Decline+and+Fall+of+the&hl=en&ei=gL2CTJOzD4-8sAOA56y5Ag&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10&ved=0CF4Q6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

[SunkenCiv]

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[colorado tanker]

It's always been interesting to me that most Europeans choose to focus on the "decline and fall" in the Western Roman Empire rather than the fact the Eastern Empire lived on another 1000 years, at times with a quite brilliant civilization.

Although Rome contributed much to Western civilization, the fact is our civilization wouldn't have come into existence had Rome not fallen to our "barbarian" ancestors.