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As Stephen Goode states (1998, p. 19) Gibbon's magnificent and memorable story is how difficult equilibrium is to maintain. Such equilibrium was based in most part on the emperor's character. A bad emperor would mean mad times. "The evil imperializing genius of Augustus placed this delicate balance in jeopardy," Gibbon writes, as one of his major themes of his book: That is, when imperial power is misused as it often was, the result was sapping the virtue of the state and initiating the decline of the living and strong political life that had maintained Rome during the Republic and created its greatness.
Gibbon was the major critic of the Roman Empire, and as detailer of its decline, he explains the loss of the public support and withdrawal of citizens from personal involvement in the life of the empire: "Their personal valor remained, but they no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence, the sense of national honor, the presence of danger, and the habit of command. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign, and trusted for their defense to a mercenary army." In other words,...
"The total subversion of all rank, order, and government, could be productive only of a popular monster which after devouring everything else, must finally devour itself," he writes, emphasizing his great theme that government, when endlessly expanded, will result in no good (Goode, 1998, p.20). It may do history well to review Gibbon's work to determine the similarities between that time and now and what the future may bring.
References Cited;
Craddock, P. (1989) Edward Gibbon. Luminous Historian. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.
Epstein, J. (1996). Real Page-Turner. The American Scholar 65: 167-8
Goode, S. (1998) Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire. Insight on the News. 14(29) 18+.
Kelly, C. (1998) Edward Gibbon, the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Greece & Rome. 45: 232-233.
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