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
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire indulged the appetites of a man, and abused the claims of a prophet. A special revelation dispensed him from the laws which he had imposed on his nation: the female sex, without reserve, was abandoned to his desires; and this singular prerogative excited the envy, rather than the scandal, the veneration, rather than the envy, of the devout Mussulmans.". Gibbon described the Jews as ""a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them the implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but also of humankind"". Because of his view Gibbon has been charged with antisemitism.