“The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

Monday, June 27, 2016 Monday, June 27, 2016 Back Story

“In the second century of the Christian Era, the empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilized portion of mankind.”

That’s the opening sentence of a book that might not be on your summer reading list: “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.”

It took the English historian Edward Gibbon more than a decade of work to get to the final sentence, which he penned on this night in 1787.

He was first inspired to write the book while in Rome in 1764, he said, “as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter.”

The first volume arrived in 1776, an instant best seller warning that all empires must someday fall, just as the American colonies declared independence from the British crown.

The book starts in the second century and covers the end of Rome’s Western empire in volumes two and three, taking readers to about the fifth century. Nearly a millennium is compressed into the second half, ending with the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

The work, which uses only primary documents, is considered by many to be the greatest English-language work of historical research. It contains 1.5 million words and 8,000 footnotes.

Upon completing the sixth volume, King George III said: “Another damned big black book, Mr. Gibbon. Scribble, scribble, scribble — eh, Mr. Gibbon?”