Posts: 1,189
Threads: 33
Joined: Apr 2005
Reputation:
2
I am rereading it right now. for native English speakers one of the joys of the work is the elegance and precision of Gibbon's language. He was one of the greatest prose stylists of the English language. You can search through the whole, huge work and not find a word out of place or a more succinct, not to say witty, manner of expressing concepts. To his contemporaries, used to a more ornate style, his writings were as astonishing and as influential as Caesar's bare-bones writings were to his contemporaries.
Pecunia non olet
Posts: 8,090
Threads: 505
Joined: Jan 2005
Reputation:
0
Quote:I am rereading it right now. for native English speakers one of the joys of the work is the elegance and precision of Gibbon's language. He was one of the greatest prose stylists of the English language. You can search through the whole, huge work and not find a word out of place or a more succinct, not to say witty, manner of expressing concepts. To his contemporaries, used to a more ornate style, his writings were as astonishing and as influential as Caesar's bare-bones writings were to his contemporaries.
And all done with a quill and a biological spellcheck.
TARBICvS/Jim Bowers
A A A DESEDO DESEDO!
Posts: 372
Threads: 28
Joined: Dec 2004
Reputation:
0
With all due respect to Gibbon...but his works are nevertheless 200 years old. I´m sure we have advanced a bit beyond his available facts by now.
Daniel
Posts: 57
Threads: 5
Joined: Nov 2005
Reputation:
0
Gibbon's actual view was more like, the rise of Christianity enervated to the Empire to the point that allowed its fall to the Barbarians. He also paid due note, of course, to the long period of civil wars in the 300's which did the heavy lifting of decimating the Western Army.
In his own words, "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion", and it's particularly Christianity that the he convicts. Re-read chapters 15 and 16.
rkmvca/Rich Klein