Comment by DrPhish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DrPhish | Hacker News Reader

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As nice as that is for a quick overview, the whole story was told rather well by Gibbon in his "History of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire".

If that has whet your appetite and you'd like a more in-depth telling of just this episode then you can skip right to : https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/895/pg895-images.html#l... and enjoy.

If you have an inclination, I'd heartily recommend the entire set of books. As an anecdote, it took me 2 years of reading 10-20 minutes per night most nights. I found it extremely enlightening and entertaining (Gibbon has a wicked wit).

As much as Gibbon is not in fashion these days, the research I did showed that the essential parts of our understanding of the nuts and bolts of the history haven't changed since it was written, and I don't think anyone else has contextualized and editorialized the whole story with as much intelligence and careful thought since.

I also found pretty well all the complaints about Gibbon's interpretation to have actually been though about and answered _by_ Gibbon in the text (in eloquent detail!), which I found surprising given the frequency with which he seems to be dismissed with simplistic arguments.

John Julius Norwich's trilogy on Byzantium is also well worth a read for coverage of this period

I second this recommendation. I found it surprising easy to read - the sardonic humor kept me going even when I struggled to keep track of all the details/people/names/places. Although I didn't attempt the full set - just the thousand or so page "abridged" version.

I have the second-hand impression [0] that Gibbon exemplifies a particular focus of explanation that some later authors drew contrast against by emphasizing the continuity/influence of some social and cultural (ex Christian church) institutions or trappings that continued after Augustus Romulus.

[0] in a three part blog by Bret Devereaux https://acoup.blog/?s=roman+empire+fall

It's not so much that Gibbon is out of fashion, it's that he is more often wrong than right. Good storyteller, if you want to read a story, but on his own, not a sufficient foundation if you want to learn something.

Learning about roman history from him is like learning from Aristotle or Freud. It's not all wrong, but there are better sources, and if that's all you read, you'll be way more confused than enlightened.

>it's that he is more often wrong than right.

I hear this a lot, but I really haven't been able to find much...is there an "errata" of where he is wrong on specific things that are material events in history?

Most complaints these days about Gibbon are more about the Enlightenment era biases and tone. We have an additional 250 years of research and archaeology of the Roman Empire to build more facts, but Gibbon is still worthy and informative.

History is about linear analysis of multidimensional phenomena. There is no way to increase objective accuracy over a certain honesty threshold. The only way to improve Historical knowledge is to consume the work of various competent analysts.

I don't remember what they were, but Mary Beard had some seemingly credible criticisms or just updates to Gibbon.

I got through a significant portion of the decline and fall but got bored somewhere after Justinian as the decline and fall of my interest in the Roman empire begins somewhere around the state conversion to Christianity.

> Mary Beard had some seemingly credible criticisms or just updates to Gibbon

I had a look at her back when I was reading, but also just now revisited some articles comparing them, and I couldn't find anything substantial that didn't boil down to a dislike of his style, or disagreement over approach.

I really would like to update any incorrect facts that I might have picked up when reading Gibbon, so something concrete would be much appreciated!

I'm not too worried about having picked up his conclusions, since I've come to my own based on the description of events and supplementing with a fair amount of other treatments (mostly "The Learning Company" stuff, for better or for worse)

Just read it. There is a superiority bias in his description of world cultures and their histories.

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