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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 3187037, member: 76194&quot;]The problem with Gibbons is that subsequent generations continue to give his book far more relevance that what it deserves. It was the masterpiece of Roman history for the late 18th century, but in many ways it is badly outdated now.</p><p><br /></p><p>For example, Nerva is one of his good Emperors, but the only good decision Nerva really made was appointing Trajan as his successor. And he didn&#039;t do that out of any real wisdom. Rather, the praetorian troops had tried to assassinate him and if he didn&#039;t pick a strong military leader immediately, he knew he would be dead within 24 hours. Other than that one decision made out of desperation, the rest of his short reign was mediocre at best. So if anything, Gibbons treating him as a good emperor is far kinder than what he deserves.</p><p><br /></p><p>Another example of Gibbons giving us a wrong impression is the case of Commodus. Because Gibbons savaged him and loathed him, we often think of Commodus as being the emperor who brought the empire into terminal decline. However, the real history which modern scholarship and archeological research has uncovered shows us that the empire thrived after the bad stewardship of Commodus,&nbsp; didn&#039;t near-collapse until many decades after his death due to many factors that had nothing to do with Commodus, rebounded again, and then collapsed one last time. It&#039;s preposterous to try to blame Commodus for bad decisions made by other Romans more than 200 years after Commodus died. That would be like a US historian blaming President Andrew Johnson for the &quot;collapse&quot; of the United States.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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