History of Rome (Mommsen) historian of his century or of ours. His only rival in any century was Edward Gibbon, whose monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire complements rather than competes with Mommsen's superb description of the Roman republic." One encyclopaedic reference summarizes: "Equally great as antiquary, jurist, political and social historian, Mommsen [had] no rivals. He combined the power of minute investigation with a singular faculty for bold generalization... ." About the "History of Rome" the universal historian Arnold J. Toynbee writes, "Mommsen wrote a great book, which certainly will always be reckoned among the masterpieces of Western
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Christianity and then of the Roman State Church, and the history of Europe, and discusses the decline of the Roman Empire among other things. Gibbon’s work remains a great literary achievement and a very readable introduction to the period, but considerable progress has since been made in history and archaeology, and his interpretations no longer represent current academic knowledge or thought. Gibbon offers an explanation for the fall of the Roman Empire, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to attempt it. According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed