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
Fall of the Western Roman Empire Nepos in 480. Gibbon gave a classic formulation of reasons why the Fall happened. He began an ongoing controversy by attributing a significant role to Christianity in the Western Roman Empire's fall, which is no longer accepted by modern Roman historians. However, he did give great weight to other causes of internal decline as well and to the attacks from outside the Empire. Alexander Demandt enumerated 210 different theories on why Rome fell, and new ideas have emerged since. Historians still try to analyze the reasons for loss of political control over a vast territory (and, as a subsidiary theme,