SOURCE: Labriola, Albert C. “Enlightenment Historiography and Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” Enlightenment Essays 5, no. 2 (summer 1974): 44-9.

[In the following essay, Labriola argues that Gibbon's Decline and Fall is an exemplar of Enlightenment historiography, with its philosophical emphasis on fundamental truths to understand figures, institutions, and events from a period long past.]

In The Literary Art of Edward Gibbon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960) Harold L. Bond observes that “the philosophic historian is expected not only to furnish his contemporaries with materials which can be used in forming observations about human action; he should also write history in such a way that the universal principles of human nature are illustrated” (p. 10). As a philosophic historian, Edward Gibbon writes in the tradition of Enlightenment historiography that includes Voltaire, Montesquieu, Robertson, and Hume; and in his Essai sur l'étude de la littérature (1761) he defines the philosophic spirit that characterizes the Enlightenment historian's view of history as an opportunity to analyze the “basic ideas” and “first principles” that underlie the events of a particular period or epoch:

The philosophic spirit consists in being able to go back to basic ideas; to perceive and to bring together first principles. The view of the “philosophe” is exact, but at the same time extensive. Placed on a height, he comprehends a great expanse of territory, of which he forms a clear and unique image, while other minds just as exact, but more confined, discern only a part of the expanse. He might be a geometrician, an antiquary, a musician, but he is always a “philosophe,” and by virtue of seeing through the first principles of his art, he transcends it. He has a place among that small number of geniuses, appearing at long intervals, who work to form that primary science to which, if it should be perfected, the others would be subordinate. In this sense that spirit is not very common. There are enough geniuses able to take in specific ideas with exactness; there a few of them who can include in a single abstract idea, a collection of numerous other less general ideas.

(my translation from Gibbon's French)

Throughout The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, emperors and Church leaders occupy Gibbon's attention as he traces the disintegration of the Empire and the growth of Christianity. He often studies these rulers, both imperial and ecclesiastical, as images of power and authority whose conduct is affected by virtues and vices that are typical of human nature. In the emperors' conduct, for example, Gibbon sees “the utmost lines of vice and virtue; the most exalted perfection, and the meanest degeneracy of our own species,” and Church leaders also reflect various degrees of excellence and degeneracy of human nature (Decline and Fall [New York: Three-volume Modern Library edition, 1932], I, 70). The standard of judgment used in evaluating leaders is “the most perfect idea of human nature,” which Gibbon defines:

There are two very natural propensities which we may distinguish in the most virtuous and liberal dispositions, the love of pleasure and the love of action. If the former is refined by art and learning, improved by the charms of social intercourse, and corrected by a just regard of economy, to health, and to reputation, it is productive of the greatest part of the happiness of private life. The love of action is a principle of a much stronger and more doubtful nature. It often leads to anger, to ambition, and to revenge; but when it is guided by the sense of propriety and benevolence, it becomes the parent of every virtue, and, if those virtues are accompanied with equal abilities, a family, a state, or an empire may be indebted for their safety and prosperity to the undaunted courage of a single man. To the love of pleasure we may therfore ascribe most of the agreeable, to the love of action we may attribute most of the useful and respectable, qualifications. The character in which both the one and the other should be united and harmonised would seem to constitute the most perfect idea of human nature.

(I, 413)

The successful union of the love of pleasure, displayed in one's private life, and the love of action, illustrated in one's public life, is Gibbon's ideal for human nature, his criterion or standard for judgment of leaders, and one of the “basic ideas” or “first principles” underlying his history of the Empire and his commentary on the Church. For Gibbon, the Empire and the Church became institutions of “immoderate greatness” as both evolved from republicanism to despotism, with power centered in the emperors on the one hand and in the Popes on the other; and the similar governmental changes in both institutions are related to his common attitude toward emperors and ecclesiastical rulers, who appraised according to his standard of “the most perfect idea of human nature.” As emperors and Church leaders become increasingly absolutist by usurping governmental powers, they tend to deviate from “the most perfect idea of human nature” and to undermine the ideal republican form of government.

Gibbon divides the first part of The Decline and Fall, which ends with the fall of the Empire in the West, into two major sections: first, the administrations of the emperors from Augustus through Marcus Aurelius (d.a.d.180); second, the administrations of the emperors after the death of Marcus Aurelius to the death of Heraclius (a.d. 641). Moreover, within the first section he classifies Augustus' successors as the Iron Age emperors, who are the immediate successors (Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Vitellius, Domitian), and the Golden Age emperors, who are the later successors (Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antonius Pius, Marcus Aurelius). The Iron Age emperors were unworthy men who perverted the love of pleasure and the love of action—that is, who failed to achieve a rewarding private or speculative life and who demonstrated an unproductive active or public life. Their public conduct, for example, did not reflect the propriety, benevolence, virtues, and abilities that distinguish the ideal ruler. Instead, they inclined toward ambition, anger, and revenge. Collectively the Iron Age emperors displayed perversions of character and unnatural “fears and vice”:

It is almost superflous to enumerate the unworthy successors of Augustus. Their unparalleled vices, and the splendid theatre on which they were acted, have saved them from oblivion. The dark unrelenting Tiberius, the furious Caligula, the feeble claudius, the profligate and cruel Nero, the beastly Vitellius, and the timid inhuman Domitian, are condemned to everlasting infamy. During fourscore years (excepting only the short and doubtful respite of Vespasian's reign) Rome groaned beneath an unremitting tyranny, which exterminated the ancient families of the republic, and was fatal to almost every virtue, and every talent, that arose in that unhappy period.

(I, 70-71)

The Iron Age emperors usurped the governmental prerogatives granted the people under the republic and advanced the absolutism initially fostered by Augustus. Gibbon seems to recognize that Augustus and the Iron Age emperors deprived the people of participation in republican government and conditioned them to accept the mere image or illusion of republican freedom.

In contrast to the Iron Age emperors, the Golden Age emperors, when evaluated against Gibbon's standard for human nature, are deemed worthy rulers. They combined the love of pleasure and the love of action, and their resulting public conduct, which was guided by propriety and benevolence, reflected their “virtue” and “abilities.” Trajan, for instance, “that virtuous and active prince” (I,5), combined successfully the private man and the public man, the agreeable personality and the utilitarian administrator, the speculative man and the active man. Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius also approximate Gibbon's ideal for human nature. Antonius Pius “in private life … was an amiable as well as a good man,” and “the benevolence of his soul displayed itself in a cheerful serenity of temper” (I, 69). Marcus Aurelius exemplified virtue “of a severer and more laborious kind,” and he “was severe to himself, indulgent to the imperfections of others, just and beneficent to all mankind” (I, 69). Gibbon comments that the “united reigns” of Antonius Pius and Marcus Aurelius “are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government” (I, 68). Moreover, “such princes deserved the honour of restoring the republic had the Romans of their days been capable of enjoying a rational freedom” (I, 70). The Golden Age emperors, however, remained benevolent absolutists preserving the “image of liberty” (I, 70), and “a feeble senate long as it was supported by the virtue, or even by the prudence, of the successors of Augustus” (I, 64). But the Golden Age emperors were apprehensive of “the instability of a happiness which depended on the character of a single man,” and they were anxious of “the fatal moment … when some licentious youth, or some jealous tyrant, would abuse, to the destruction, that absolute power which they had exerted for the benefit of their people” (I, 70)

From the death of Marcus Aurelius through the fall of the Empire in the West and also through the second part of The Decline and Fall (describing the Empire in Constantinople), Gibbon discusses the emperors as rulers of an increasingly decadent state marked by civil wars, and he uses his standard for human nature in evaluating them. For instance, in characterizing Leo VI, Emperor of Constantinople (d. a.d. 912), he states briefly his ideal for human nature and then appraises Leo's aberration from it:

The name of Leo the Sixth has been dignified with the title of philosopher; and the union of the prince and the sage, of the active and the speculative virtues, would indeed constitute the perfection of human nature. But the claims of Leo are far short of this ideal excellence. Did he reduce his passions and appetites under the dominion of reason? His life was spent in the pomp of the palace, in the society of his wives and concubines; and even the clemency which he showed, and the peace which he strove to preserve, must be imputed to the softness and indolence of this character. Did he subdue his prejudices, and those of his subjects? His mind was tinged with the most puerile superstition; the influence of the clergy and the errors of the people were consecrated by his laws; and the oracles of Leo, which reveal, in prophetic style, the fates of the empire, are founded on the arts of astrology and divination.

(II, 894-895)

And the cowardly Maximin, Emperor of the East who fled from battle against Licinius, deviates so extremely from Gibbon's ideal for human nature that he is “destitute of abilities and of virtue” (I, 369). His ignominious retreat marked him as a failure publicly, and in his private life he was probably beset by great despair. He survived his retreat “only three or four months,” and at his death (a.d. 313), which was “variously ascribed to despair, to poison, and to the divine justice,” he was lamented “neither by the people nor by the soldiers” (I, 369).

The early Christians and their ecclesiastical leaders are also evaluated against Gibbon's ideal for human nature; and in Gibbon's view Maximin's cowardly temperament, which deprived him of happiness and fulfillment in private life and of effective service in public life, was not unlike the pusillanimous disposition of the early Christians, to whom Gibbon attributes and “insensible and inactive disposition” that is “destitute” of the love of pleasure and the love of action; for such a temperament “would be rejected, by the common consent of mankind, as utterly incapable of procuring any happiness to the individual, or any public benefit to the world” (I, 413). But Gibbon explains “it was not in this world that the primitive Christians were desirous of making themselves either agreeable or useful” (I, 413). Because of their other-world orientation, the ecclesiastics preached self-denial in respect to this world's pleasures and passivity in respect to participation in civil government. They manifested “pusillanimous sentiments” (I, 417), and “the active virtues of society were discouraged; and the last remains of military spirit were buried in the cloister” (II, 439). Tertullian, for example, advocated that his Christian compatriots desert the army, for the martial spirit was incompatible with their temperament (I, 416, n. 103).

When analyzing the internal, governmental policy of the early Church, Gibbon traces the evolution of the governmental structure from republicanism to despotism, and he focuses on the arrogation of governmental powers by increasingly absolutist Christian leaders. The ecclesiastical governments of the early Christian communities resembled the independent commonwealths of the Roman republic, and each community was virtually a Christian commonwealth:

The safety of the society, its honour, its aggrandisement, were productive, even in the most pious minds, of a spirit of patriotism, such as the first of the Romans had felt for the republic, and sometimes of a similar indifference in the use of whatever means might probably conduce to so desirable and end.

(I, 417)

A number of societies or commonwealths in the cities of the Empire governed the church during the first century. These societies “were united only by the ties of faith and charity. Independence and equality formed the basis of their internal constitution” (I, 418). With the growth of the Christian communities, an episcopal form of government was established in them in which the titles of presbyter and bishop were originated. These titles “appear to have distinguished the same office and the same order of persons”; for the title of presbyter “was expressive … of their gravity and wisdom,” while the title of bishop “denoted their inspection over the faith and manners of the Christians who were committed to their pastoral care” (I, 418). Among the presbyters, however, it became customary to elect a president, “a superior magistrate,” to preside over the other presbyters, who formed an assembly or “Christian senate” (I, 419). The title of bishop was reserved thereafter for the superior magistrate. Motivated by benevolence, the bishops of the first Christian communities were viewed as “servants of a free people” (I, 420). Similar to the Roman republic, which was characterized by “the firm and equal balance of the constitution” (II, 437), each ecclesiastical government was regulated by a “mild and equal constitution” and was virtually “a separate and independent republic” (I, 420). At the end of the second century, provincial synods, which were attended by the bishops, unified the episcopal governments; and the assembled bishops issued decrees that infringed upon the legislative authority of local episcopal senates:

As the legislative authority of the particular churches was insensibly surperseded by the use of councils, the bishops obtained by their alliance a much larger share of executive and arbitrary power; and as soon as they were connected by a sense of their common interest, they were enabled to attack, with united vigour, the original rights of their clergy and people. The prelates of the third century imperceptibly changed the language of exhortation into that of command, scattered the seeds of future usurpations, and supplied, by Scripture allegories and declamatory rhetoric, their deficiency of force and of reason.

(I, 421)

Much as Augustus had “destroyed the independence of the senate” (I, 54) and had usurped imperceptibly the legislative power, so also the bishops subverted unnoticeably the constitutions of the local episcopal governments. Like Augustus who had feigned respect for an effete senate, the bishops professed nominal allegiance to enervated episcopal senates. For Gibbon, whenever an executive authority, emperor or ecclesiastic, arrogates the legislative power of a free assembly, the designation of tyrant or dictator used. Both the imperial and the ecclesiastical tyrants destroyed Gibbon's ideal republican form of government, which includes “the firm and equal balance of the constitution which united the freedom of popular assemblies with the authority and wisdom of a senate and the executive powers of a regal magistrate” (II, 437). Much as the Roman cities and free states had been “sunk into real servitude” (I, 31), so also the Christian communities were deprived of governmental autonomy. The Roman provinces were “servile” and “destitute of life and motion” (II, 441), and the Christian monks, for example, followed with “credulity and submission” the dicta of their “ecclesiastical tyrant” (II, 355), the abbot of a monastery.

With the emergence of the “ecclesiastical tyrant,” Gibbon applies his standard for human nature in appraising character. Concerning Athanasius (a.d. 293?-373), Bishop of Alexandria, Gibbon observes:

We have seldom an opportunity of observing, either in active or speculative life, what effect may be produced, or what obstacles may be surmounted, by the force of a single mind, when it is inflexibly applied to the pursuit of a single object. The immortal name of Athanasius will never be separated from the catholic doctrine of the Trinity, to whose defence he consecrated every moment and every faculty of his being.

(I, 697-698)

Gibbon also remarks that “Athanasius displayed a superiority of character and abilities which would have qualified him, far better than the degenerate sons of Constantine, for the government of a great monarchy” (I, 698). Athanasius' effectiveness as an administrator and his absolutism in the episcopacy of Alexandria enabled him to resist Julian the Apostate, the last pagan emperor, who attempted to suppress Christianity while reviving paganism. Athanasius, an “Ecclesiastical Dictator” (I, 793), outlived Julian, whose early death (a.d. 331-363) removed the last obstacle to the uninhibited growth of Christianity throughout the Empire.

While the Empire disintegrated from barbarian invasions, the Church continued its expansion. Ultimately, effective control over the entire Church was acquired by a single ruler, the Pope, who was in Gibbon's view an absolutist not unlike Augustus and his successors. As the Popes, like the emperors, centralized authority in themselves, the Church achieved “immoderate greatness” and finally suffered fragmentation because of the destructive influence of the heresies and the Reformation. For Gibbon, the effect of this destructive influence was an erosion of the absolutism of the Popes, who had deviated from the “most perfect idea of human nature,” had abused their offices by becoming despots, and had obliterated the ideal republican form of government. In the tradition of Enlightenment historiography, Gibbon achieves a vantage point from which to identify and explain “basic ideas” and “first principles” that may be employed to understand historical events, human institutions, and human nature.