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Article: Decline and fall of Roman Empire.(includes related excerpt from 'The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire')
- Article from:
- Insight on the News
- Article date:
- August 10, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 News World Communications, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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No great writer has emphasized more powerfully the importance of civic responsibility and good citizenship to the well-being of a people than historian Edward Gibbon.
It was one of those marriages made in heaven, Edward Gibbon's great history of ancient Rome and the American Republic. The first volume of Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire appeared in 1776, the year of the Declaration of Independence and the beginning of the American struggle for independence and liberty.
The last volume of Gibbon's history, the sixth, was published in 1788, the year Americans were beginning to draw up their own Constitution, which they hoped ...