Gibbon’s work on the dying years of the Roman Empire — well, all 1480 of them, from the day Augustus took the reins of the empire to the day the Ottomans sacked Constantinople — is as much a work of complex social science and of political philosophy as it is a work of history. Of major interest, however, are his short sentences, masterfully inserted in the midst of expansive discussions on minutiae of the functioning of the Empire, such as this one:
“In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was preserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade.”1
Continue reading “Gibbon and Active Citizenship”
- Edward Gibbon, The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire, Chap. 1, § Military Establishment of the Roman Emperors. ↩