Sunset and fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon E.

“History, in essence, is slightly different from the list of crimes, recklessness and disasters of the human race,” says British historian Eduard Gibbon (1737–1794) in the main work of his life - a large -scale essay on the decline and destruction of the Great Roman Empire. In this innovative and at the same time provocative book for his time, the author traces the processes that took place in the Roman state and society from the heyday of the empire to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which marked its end. Despite the long and fierce controversy regarding the “anti -religious” views of Gibbon to the origin and spread of Christianity, his work is still entering the corps of classical works to study this period in Western universities. In Russian, the text is reproduced with minor reductions.