The History of English Poetry favourable response to the first edition. "The Gentleman's Magazine", reviewing the first volume, called it "this capital historical piece", and had no doubt that "every connoisseur will be curious to view the original, and impatient for the completion of it". Of the third volume the same magazine wrote that it "does equal credit to Mr. Warton's taste, judgment, and erudition, and makes us impatiently desirous of more". Edward Gibbon mentioned the "History" in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", saying it had been accomplished "with the taste of a poet and the minute diligence of an antiquarian". But
Fall of the Western Roman Empire Nepos in 480. Gibbon gave a classic formulation of reasons why the Fall happened. He began an ongoing controversy by attributing a significant role to Christianity in the Western Roman Empire's fall, which is no longer accepted by modern Roman historians. However, he did give great weight to other causes of internal decline as well and to the attacks from outside the Empire. Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new ideas have emerged since. Historians still try to analyze the reasons for loss of political control over a vast territory (and, as a subsidiary theme,