The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is a six-volume work by the English historian Edward Gibbon. It traces Western civilization (as well as the Islamic and Mongolian conquests) from the height of the Roman Empire to the fall of Byzantium. Volume I was published in 1776 and went through six printings. Volumes II and III were published in 1781; volumes IV, V, and VI in 1788–1789. The six volumes cover the history, from 98 to 1590, of the Roman Empire, the history of early
Structural history of the Roman military off deep in the enemy's rear. Simultaneously, barbarian troops in Rome's pay came to be "in a condition of almost perpetual turbulence and revolt" from 409 onwards. In 476 these troops finally unseated the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire. The Eastern Roman forces continued to defend the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire until its fall in 1453. The former Oxford University historian Adrian Goldsworthy has argued that the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire in the West should not be blamed on barbarization of the late Roman Army, but on its recurrent civil wars, which led to