Great Men and Their Achievements; Or, the People's Book of Biography: Being Short Lives of t... Book

Such an incredible journey it has been, reading one of the great masterpieces of historical writing. I wondered, at the outset, at the prospect of tackling such a voluminous work; yet, here I am at the conclusion of Volume 5, with one more to go!

The more I read (actually in my case, listen, on Audible) to Gibbon, the more respect I have for the incredible amount of research, on his part, that went in to writing an essay of such depth and detail covering 1500-plus years of history.

Volume 5, maybe more than the ones preceding, contained digressions and ventures far beyond just a strict history of Rome. Gibbon knows how to tell fascinating and interesting stories, and eventually always connects the dots, in some way, back to the Roman Empire.

I’ll see you at the finish line in a few weeks! For now, some highlights from Volume 5, a narrative from roughly the 6th to the 11th centuries:

1. More account of early church councils, schisms and conflicts: the Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites, Armenians and Copts – and another lengthy essay recounting the influence of Christianity on the fall of the Roman Empire.

2. A dizzying roll-call of emperors of the East, from Heraclius (610-641) to Andronicus 1 (1183-1185), including short sketches of each of the several dozen emperors in between.

3. A LONG tour through Arabia, the birth and life of Mohammed, the foundations of Islam, and the invasions by the Moslems of surrounding nations.

4. The early seeds of the Reformation, sown in the 11th and 12th centuries, by the Paulicians (nope, I’d never heard of them either).

5. Various attacks in the Empire from the 7th to the 12th Century: the Bulgarians, Hungarians, Saracens, Franks, and Normans.

Plus, there’s always Gibbon’s witty and rich prose to enhance the avalanche of facts. Onward to the final volume!