The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire I

This opening volume of Gibbon's history, first issued in 1776, surveys the Roman Empire at its second-century height under the Antonines and then follows the slide from Commodus through the Severan house and the military anarchy of the third century. Gibbon describes the army, the frontier, the constitution of the principate, Persian revival, and Germanic pressure, and he weighs how prosperity and despotism prepared later collapse. The narrative stays with emperors, soldiers, and institutions rather than daily life. It is the first movement of a larger history, not a complete account of Rome's end.

Bound in dark red-brown buckram decorated in gold. Map endleaves. Pale yellow-brown slipcase.