Barbarism and Religion - Brief Article - Book Review

Contemporary Review, Dec, 2003

Barbarism and Religion. Volume Three. The First Decline and Fall. J. G. A. Pocock. Cambridge University Press. [pounds sterling]45.00 and US$60.00. 527 pages. ISBN 0-521-82445-1. In this third volume Prof. Pocock continues his exhaustive intellectual analysis of Gibbon, his Decline and Fall and the age in which it was written.

In the earlier volumes he 'brought Gibbon to the verge of writing his master work' and here he specifically is concerned with Gibbon's first fourteen chapters (excluding the two chapters dealing with the Persians and Germans). But before he turns to these he examines the very idea of 'decline and fall' as seen in Rome's own history and the idea of the 'two cities'(religious and secular) as propounded by St Augustine. He discuses the vital influence of Tacitus and argues that, to Gibbon, these early chapters represented a view of history in which the decline and fall of the Empire only continued 'the history of the republic' rather than ushered in a new, Christian era. The Roman concern with libertas et imperium became, by Gibbon's time, the concern with 'ancient and modern, virtue and commerce'. It is against this background that Gibbon wrote and it was a background shared by his readers.