«History, in essence, differs little from a list of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of the human race,» — states British historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) in the main work of his life — a vast composition on the decline and fall of the great Roman Empire. In this innovative and at the same time provocative book for its time, the author traces the processes occurring in Roman state and society from the height of the Empire to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, marking its end. Despite the long and fierce debate regarding Gibbon's «anti-religious» views on the emergence and spread of Christianity, his work still belongs to the corpus of classical writings for studying this period at Western universities. The text is reproduced in Russian with minor omissions.
