The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings. Volumes II and III were published in 1781; volumes IV, V, and VI in 1788–1789. The six volumes cover the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early
Legacy of the Roman Empire to the point that competing neighbours even acquired its name, such as the Sultanate of Rûm. The designation of the Empire as "Byzantine" is a retrospective idea: it began only in 1557, a century after the fall of Constantinople, when German historian Hieronymus Wolf published his work "Corpus Historiæ Byzantinæ", a collection of Byzantine sources. The term did not come in general use in the Western world before the 19th century, when modern Greece was born. The end of the "continuous" tradition of the Roman Empire is open to debate: the final point was the capture of Constantinople in 1453