The greatest collapse of a mighty state, a large human society and a fruitful civilization of which we possess a reasonably accurate record, has been immortalized by Edward Gibbon’s historical classic, The Decline and Fall of The Roman Empire. Henry Adams remarked that Gibbon did not really explain the fall; but this criticism is not altogether just. As the following excerpts from The Decline and Fall show, the philosophic historian offered a number of reflections on the symptoms and causes of the drama which he set out to describe: "This long peace and the uniform government of the Romans introduced...