The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Nonfiction | Book | Adult

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-10

Chapters 11-12

Chapters 13-14

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Themes

The Influence of Religion and Superstition

A frequent criticism of Edward Gibbon since his own lifetime is that he is critical of Christianity. Although it is not entirely accurate to say that Gibbon blames the fall of the Roman Empire on the rise of Christianity alone, Gibbon does bring to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire a skeptical Enlightenment view of religion.

For Gibbon, the ideal form of religion is one that allows for intellectual freedom and focuses more on ethical and social matters than metaphysical debates. In one of the most famous passages from The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon states, “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful” (28). Even at its best, Gibbon remarks that religion rarely lives up to its ideals, since it is so often tied to the agenda of secular rulers. Cynically, Gibbon writes, “The influence of the clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connexion between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people” (59).

Writing about the religion of Zoroastrianism, Gibbon admits that the religion in its purest form provided laws that supported “private and public happiness, seldom to be found among the groveling or visionary schemes of superstition” (201). This reflects Gibbon’s view that, in its best form, religion helps provide social order and practical morals. However, religion can be corrupted by superstition. Gibbon never offers an exact definition of superstition, but it does seem to refer to excessive rites and irrational beliefs. When religion is corrupted by “superstition,” it leads to disorder, which Gibbon terms “theological rancor” (28), intolerance, and to the hoarding of wealth by priests.

Furthermore, throughout Gibbon’s narrative, superstition always overlaps with effeminacy, despotism, and “the East.” This is perhaps embodied by nothing better than the person of the emperor Elagabalus. Gibbon claims the only “serious business” of Elagabalus’s reign was “superstitious gratitude” to his patron deity (144-45). Still, it is not always quite that simple. While Gibbon suggests Zoroastrianism was tainted by “superstition” and disapproves of the persecution of non-Zoroastrian faiths under Artaxerxes, he still praises the Zoroastrian religion for its preservation of the “secrets of Oriental philosophy” (202).

In this way, Gibbon presents religion as sometimes a force for good, and sometimes a force of oppression. Gibbon’s celebration of Roman religious pluralism under “paganism” will contrast sharply with his critique of Christianity in later volumes of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as he subscribes to the idea that monotheism brought with it more intolerance and less intellectual dynamism than its “pagan” forebears in Rome.

The Traditional Roman “West” Versus the Corrupting “East”

One of Gibbon’s most obvious and recurring biases is his attitude toward “the East,” both throughout history and in his own time. The concept of “East Versus West” is one that has been around in European literature since the writings of the ancient Greeks, with both categories representing intellectual and cultural values instead of geographical realities. Fearing conquest by the Persian Empire, Greek writers in classical antiquity sometimes depicted the Persians as tyrannical and effeminate, in contrast to the masculine and freedom-loving Greeks.

For Gibbon, this is a historical constant lasting into his own day. For example, he writes about how in his time, Roman ruins in Turkey and the Middle East provide a contrast with “Turkish barbarism” (49). Still, Gibbon does not always follow this very old binary completely. For example, he expresses some admiration for the Persians, whose priests, the Magi, preserved ancient knowledge (201-02) and whose rulers “preserved a strong sense of personal gallantry and national honour,” although Gibbon adds they did so “in the bosom of luxury and despotism” (212).

Nonetheless, Gibbon’s arguments about the fall of the Roman Empire rely heavily on the stereotypical idea that the liberty-loving Romans were in some way tainted by the “effeminate” and “servile” cultures found in their Eastern provinces. For example, Gibbon credits Probus’s victory over Florianus to the fact that Florianus had to rely on the “effeminate troops of Egypt and Syria” (325, emphasis added). He also tends to speak of Eastern cultures as steeped in luxury and worldly pleasures, suggesting that he regards those cultures as more superficial and morally lax than the traditional culture of Rome.

Significantly, Gibbon views the story of Roman decline as partially that of Rome succumbing to the corruptions of “the East” through Romans abandoning military service and the emperors becoming increasingly despotic and “Eastern.” He also regards with mistrust the growing role played by figures from the Eastern provinces outside of Rome in Rome’s government and army. In describing the Romans as seduced and corrupted by Eastern influences, Gibbon suggests that the process of decline was an amalgamation of both external and internal processes: While the Empire faced numerous external threats and challenges, the gradual erosion from within of a traditional Roman culture and its militaristic values robbed Rome itself of the qualities and institutions that Gibbon regards as its distinct strengths. In becoming too “Eastern,” Rome destroyed itself slowly from the inside out.

The Role of the Military in Political Crises

The Roman military plays a significant role in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, perhaps more so than the emperors themselves. The military forms one of the three cornerstones of Roman government, along with the emperor and the Senate. The first emperor Augustus’s political system was built on a balance between the three, with the emperor being legitimized in the eyes of the military through the authority of the Senate (72). Over time, however, the emperors were increasingly at the mercy of their bodyguard, the praetorian guard, while the legions also became more assertive and demanding.

The policy decisions of specific emperors, like the expansion of the army and the relaxation of standards of army discipline under Septimius Severus and the “dangerous privileges and extravagant pay given by Caracalla” (140), worsened the problem. At the same time, Gibbon does not present this as entirely the result of the failures of individual emperors. Instead, Gibbon argues throughout The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that, with the expansion of the Roman Empire over vast swathes of territory, the army could no longer rely just on Roman citizens personally invested in the success of the army. Over time, as Romans begin to avoid joining the military, army recruitment relied more on the peoples of the provinces and on Germanic peoples allowed to settle into Roman territories.

Furthermore, it was the failure of the emperors to create a tidy and widely-recognized system of succession that enabled the military to pick and choose and get rid of emperors on a whim. At the same time, the very size of the military encouraged disorder. Gibbon argues that army discipline is “impracticable […] with an unwieldy host” and that “the powers of the machine would be alike destroyed by the extreme minuteness, or the excessive weight, of its Springs” (103).

The military was the central cause of the Crisis of the Third Century. It was the army asserting its control over the succession to the imperial office and its struggles against the Roman Senate for that right that led to so many emperors coming to power and then being quickly murdered. In part, Gibbon sees this as a result of the breakdown of military discipline and the overpay of the troops, something helped along by the incompetence of emperors like Commodus or the deliberate decisions of those like Caracalla. However, in Gibbon’s view, it is also a consequence of the Roman Senate and the upper class of Italy abandoning military responsibilities. In Gibbon’s words, the Roman Senate at the time of the emperor Probus “soon experienced that those who refuse the sword must renounce the sceptre” (328), suggesting that, as with Rome’s gradual succumbing to “Eastern” influences, the Romans themselves helped to destroy their empire by neglecting their own military responsibilities toward it.