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Dude - Gibbon’s statements have been discredited as he wrote partial fiction.

This is apparent in his blame for the fall of Rome on Chistianity,
his ignorance of several primary sources that were not discovered or deciphered until later generations,
his downplaying and general dislike of the Byzantine empire, and
his belief in now discredited details such as the supposed origin of the Goths in Scandinavia.

Gibbon recognizes the East Roman Empire as the Byzantine Empire and the Empire’s citizens as Byzantines, labels the East Romans never called themselves (nor did anyone else in their age). He does this to distance the East Romans from the aspects of the civilization he admired and seperate post 476 (or post 299) Romans from the West. Gibbon recognizes the Byzantines (East Romans) as the inheritors of the Romans but ones who imperfectly carried the legacy. They were failures compared to their predecessors.

Gibbon wanted to link the West with Rome, linking a progression from the gilded classical age, culminating in the Enlightenment, which was escaping the influence of Christianity and benefitted from the rediscovery of classical learning. He uses some of the best English prose put to paper to make his case. His bias though caused him to miss his goal by almost 977 years. To make his case, he had to paint the East Roman Empire as religiously backward and archaic. Such was the skill in his writing that his bias basically became the bias of the West.

Gibbon accepted the idea of the Dark Ages. In fact, most Enlightenment thinkers loved the idea of the Dark Ages at least as a point of comparison. It made them look better to compare themselves to the dark past. It’s in the name for the age. Enlightenment thinkers built themselves up on the idea that they were enlightened relative to the people of the Dark Ages.

The problem for Gibbon is, there were no Dark Ages in the East Roman Empire. The Romans moved from paganism, to Christian, and then synthesized classical learning with Christianity. Gibbon proposed a narrative where barbarism and Christianity mixed with corruption of various sorts, sucking the vitality and Roman vigor from a great culture, leaving a weakened inglorious civilization behind. To Gibbon this was not just less than ideal, but a corruption of better times and a better people.

Yet, while the West struggled to find an alternative to papyrus (the cheap means of writing the West used till it lost access to it), and failed to deal with Germanic overlords, the Byzantines in the East (still Romans) continued living under Roman law, under an unbroken line of emperors (at least through 1204 when the Crusaders sacked and took Constantinople, if not 1453), preserved classical thought, and defended the rest of Europe. They merged Christian theology and classical philosophy in ways that invigorated a flagging Roman culture, one in decline long before Christianity became the dominant religion.

That did not sit well with Gibbon’s narrative. It didn’t sit well with the notion that the West, Britian in particular, were true inheritors of Roman tradition; it didn’t sit well with Gibbon’s idea that Christianity was a weakening factor on Western culture that undermined natural law. The continued survival and thriving of the East under barbarian pressure when the West fell to German barbarians, did not set well either.

Many factors led to the loss of the West in 476. Gibbon gets many factors correct, like corruption and dependency on slave culture. But, he places improper emphasis on some other causes, and others he just gets wrong. He should have placed much greater emphasis on the population decline in the West and the Empire’s failure to develop more major population centers in the West—concerns Rome tried to contend with for centuries but never solved. Similarly, their inability to assimilate Germanic tribes in any meaningful way that could have alleviated population concerns and reduced external pressure, was also a major issue.

Gibbon’s bias is, unfortunately, a legacy of inaccuracy the West still lives with. It is routinely said the Roman Empire fell in 476. This is simply not true. It lasted till 1453. In doing so, Rome saved the West many times before it breathed its last, struggling against the Turks as little more than a city state. Western Civilization courses often shift focus from Rome around 476 and give scant attention to the East Romans although they were the major power and intellectual center in Europe for many centuries after 476. Much of that bias and indifference is rooted in Gibbon’s flawed work