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Description

Left to right: Colossus of Constantine, Sir Edward Gibbon, Commodus, Maximinus Thrax, Atilla the Hun (holding the Sword of Mars), Belisarius, Justinian, Theodora, Honorius (leaning against the Elagabalus stone), and Mehmed atop the platform.

With all that is transpiring, posting this recent illustration seemed apropos. This is a collage of characters and artifacts, including the author himself, of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, along with a multi-volume collection below. Deemed as one of the most eminent works of the English language and historiographical writing, Decline and Fall was the 18th-century magnum opus of Sir Edward Gibbon FRS, an English aristocrat and autodidactic historian who spent around twenty years publishing his six-volume masterpiece. Many readers are often intimidated by the work because of its size, but once they give it a chance and crack it, they find that it is hard to put down. Through elegant prose, the wordsmith Gibbon brings to life a world both glorious and brutal, crafting brilliant portraits of individuals along the way. According to Gibbon, the decline and fall of Rome can be attributed to a gradual breakdown of civic honor and virtue that made the empire susceptible to the overwhelming immigration and foreign invasions that were its death knells. It is said that every great civilization has a lifespan of about 250 years before giving up the ghost, and as the United States approaches its 250th birthday this observation is worth considering. However, the timeline of Rome is much longer, and would see much ebb and flow in its extensive history. Even as the city itself burned while Nero fiddled, the empire remained at its height, and even after it crumbled, it would survive through long-lived vestiges, most notably Byzantium. It is also worth noting that while cities, thrones and powers come and go, humanity endures and ideas remain timeless. The Founding Generation of Americans emulated the wisdom of antiquity and hoped to reincarnate the “beauty that was Rome” in the New World, from the governing structure of republican liberty, to the classical design of state architecture, to the profiles of presidents stamped on coins like the Caesars. George Washington was compared to Cincinnatus, Thomas Jefferson studied Polybius, and John Adams privately hoped to be remembered as the American Cicero, a wish that came to fruition when both he and Jefferson passed away on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Follow me on Instagram. www.instagram.com/trevor_peter…

Description

Left to right: Colossus of Constantine, Sir Edward Gibbon, Commodus, Maximinus Thrax, Atilla the Hun (holding the Sword of Mars), Belisarius, Justinian, Theodora, Honorius (leaning against the Elagabalus stone), and Mehmed atop the platform.

With all that is transpiring, posting this recent illustration seemed apropos. This is a collage of characters and artifacts, including the author himself, of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, along with a multi-volume collection below. Deemed as one of the most eminent works of the English language and historiographical writing, Decline and Fall was the 18th-century magnum opus of Sir Edward Gibbon FRS, an English aristocrat and autodidactic historian who spent around twenty years publishing his six-volume masterpiece. Many readers are often intimidated by the work because of its size, but once they give it a chance and crack it, they find that it is hard to put down. Through elegant prose, the wordsmith Gibbon brings to life a world both glorious and brutal, crafting brilliant portraits of individuals along the way. According to Gibbon, the decline and fall of Rome can be attributed to a gradual breakdown of civic honor and virtue that made the empire susceptible to the overwhelming immigration and foreign invasions that were its death knells. It is said that every great civilization has a lifespan of about 250 years before giving up the ghost, and as the United States approaches its 250th birthday this observation is worth considering. However, the timeline of Rome is much longer, and would see much ebb and flow in its extensive history. Even as the city itself burned while Nero fiddled, the empire remained at its height, and even after it crumbled, it would survive through long-lived vestiges, most notably Byzantium. It is also worth noting that while cities, thrones and powers come and go, humanity endures and ideas remain timeless. The Founding Generation of Americans emulated the wisdom of antiquity and hoped to reincarnate the “beauty that was Rome” in the New World, from the governing structure of republican liberty, to the classical design of state architecture, to the profiles of presidents stamped on coins like the Caesars. George Washington was compared to Cincinnatus, Thomas Jefferson studied Polybius, and John Adams privately hoped to be remembered as the American Cicero, a wish that came to fruition when both he and Jefferson passed away on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Follow me on Instagram. www.instagram.com/trevor_peter…