...was the classical. We begin our study of medieval history with Rome. CHAPTER 1 Rome and Its Decline "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world," wrote Edward Gibbon in his monumental History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, "during...

...conscientious concern for the provincials in his charge. The historian Edward Gibbon remarks of this era: If man were called to fix the period in the history of...name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian [AD 96] to the accession of Commodus [AD 161]. Verres Yet this may well be too sunny a view. Without...

...immediate successors of Augustus had died a nasty death. [PANTA] Yet Rome's Indian summer still lay ahead. 'If a man were called to fix the period in the history...of the human race was most happy and prosperous,' wrote Gibbon, 'he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to...

...than have put it into the power of their worst enemy to attaint the purity of their administration. " If a man were called to fix the period in the history...death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus."} That period embraces eighty-four years, from the 9ljth of the Christian era to the 1 80th, during which...

...precise the years AD 98-180, was the vantage point from which he would look both forward and back: If a man were called to fix the period in the history...race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesttation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast...

...that just 200 years ago the historian Edward Gibbon declared, "If a man were called to fix the period of the world during which the condition of the human...name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian [An 96] to the accession of Commodus [AD 180]."1 3 Plainly our idea of happiness is far removed from...

...authoritative judgment of Edward Gibbon and ponder the Age of the Antonines, of which Gibbon (1981) declared: If a man were called to fix the period in the history...the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus [Aurelius' successor]. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the...

...three phases of Roman history: the triumphant second century (famously described by Edward Gibbon as 'the period in the history of the world during which...of the human race was most happy and prosperous'); the so-called 'crisis' of the third century when military, economic, and social turmoil is represented...

...and originality which he saw as characteristic of imperial Roman society even in its Antonine heyday, 'the period in the history of the world during which...condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous' (chapter 3). For despite this emphatic assertion of the material blessings of peace, law and civilisation,...

...and tolerant rule of Nerva (96-8) and Trajan (98-117), the start of the period of which Gibbon wrote that if a man were called to fix the period in the...the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus (Bk. I, ch. 3). Human satisfaction is never, of course, unalloyed, and Gibbon went on to surmise that...