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
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire to the fall of the West Roman Empire (395-476), in his book "The Fall of the West: The Slow Death of the Roman Superpower" (2009). William H. McNeill, a world historian, noted in chapter three of his book "Plagues and Peoples" (1976) that the Roman Empire suffered the severe and protracted Antonine Plague starting around 165 AD. For about twenty years, waves of one or more diseases, possibly the first epidemics of smallpox and measles, swept through the Empire, ultimately killing about half the population. Similar epidemics, such as the Plague of Cyprian, also occurred in the 3rd century. McNeill