Decline and Fall contraction of Edward Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The title alludes also to the German philosopher Oswald Spengler's "The Decline of the West" (1918–1922), which first appeared in an English translation in 1926 and which argued, among other things, that the rise of nations and cultures is inevitably followed by their eclipse. Waugh read both Gibbon and Spengler while writing his first novel. Waugh's satire is unambiguously hostile to much that was in vogue in the late 1920s, and "themes of cultural confusion, moral disorientation and social bedlam...both drive the novel forward and
Decline of the Byzantine Empire former self. The death of Michael VIII in 1282 marks the last period of Byzantine success on anything more than a minor scale. From this date onwards, the empire entered its final decline. The history of the empire includes a number of periods of crisis, interspersed with periods of at least partial recovery: In the 5th – 7th century, the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire was a continuation of the Roman Empire. The loss of the Western territories in the 5th century led to the loss of some important cities such as Rome. The creation of the Germanic states of