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
Augustine: The Decline of the Roman Empire that point, he too, passing up a chance to escape on a ship sent to rescue him by the Pope, stays by the side of his people. Augustine: The Decline of the Roman Empire Restless Heart: The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Italian: Sant'Agostino) is a 2010 two-part television miniseries chronicling the life of St. Augustine, the early Christian theologian, writer and Bishop of Hippo Regius at the time of the Vandal invasion (AD 430). This series was directed by Christian Duguay and was shot on location in Tunisia. In the United States, the film is distributed under the title Augustine: