‘A Triumph of Barbarism and Religion’ is the alternative title of this tract, taken from Chapter 71.

For the six months since addressing Gibbon’s genius, the histories this reader is conducting have skewed away, but never far away, from the story of Rome’s many declines. I shall not quote any of the author’s wonderfully wrought passages here. For the purpose is to encourage the reader of this modest tract, in the reading of what this reader, who has not quite, and might never, acquire the distinction of having read 5,000 books, regards as the very best history into antiquity, and in greater scope, the human condition in the English language.

I currently work on a project as massive as Gibbon’s, Plantation America. Gibbon’s work might provide a reference there. The story of Alexander and of the Agrianes, is the likewise relative. However, the tribute to Robert E. Howard, Of a Naked Land, a man in his 20s who wrote a brilliant poem on civilized decline in the shadow of barbarism, appears in this reader’s mind’s eye as suggestive that young Robert once read Gibbon’s seminal work. So here, in a ruthless fantasy, honest to human nature, does Chapter 71, a beautiful ode upon and ugly subject, belong, and hence to Howard’s shade belongs the following summary of 39 of the most thoughtfully investigated and best written chapters on, “mankind,” to use Gibbon’s most common appellation for our gutter-prone races.

Chapters 33 thru 70

From A.D. 480 down through 1543 Gibbon tracks the sad declination spiral of one of the worlds “most awful” institutions, Rome “terror of kings,” and “mistress of the world,” placing Rome as The Dragon, the hoarding serpent that slew Beowulf, last protector of the race, th vessel of the ancient cult of corruption. The above ae my overlays of poetics, in the vein of Gibbon, who does value Virgil’s epic as a window of empathy into the Fears of ancient Romans. To be clear, as horrible as Rome was to its subjects and its rulers, Gibbon regards civilization as always—no matter how debased—good in comparison to barbarism. He states that man’s greatest work as steward over creation is imposing servitude upon rivers, that subduing that most fecund aspect of “licentious nature.”

From Chapter 32 and the triumph of the Huns and Vandals over the empire, Gibbon charts the transmogrification of Christianity into its many forms, fanatic, civic, military, schismatic, esoteric and finally reactive, from the 300s—backtracking a bit—to the 1500s. This is the most considered aspect of his work, in which eh quotes three orthodox sources he leans most heavily on, two French and one Italian. He uses these orthodox and catholic sources in preference to his own Protestant beliefs, and does credit Protestant professors of Christianity from the 1500s down to his day. For the context of Christianity and its relation ship with civilization, barbarism, Judaism and Islam, Gibbon is far and away the best historian. His various chapters on religion, could fill an entire book, and account for a 5th of this work.

His work on Islam is second to none, and might provide a telling prequel to Lothrop Stoddard’s New Flame of Islam. The pre-Islamic history of Arabia is covered, bringing to light that the conquests of Zoroasterian Persia, North Africa, Spain and finally Constantinople and Greece were only—that is ONLY—possible due to traitors among the upper classes. All of these invasions were invited, enabled and sustained by upper class collaboration with the invaders. The hammer fell hardest on three classes: the poor, who were sold right off, the freeholder, who was handed over by his tax farmer to a another tax farmer, and the small minority of ruling class class traitors [yes, traitors to their class] who stood up for Race and Faith. The hammer of Islam mysteriously missed the Hebrews in virtually all instances. Eventually the traitor basis for the spread of Islam turned o ist own house and debased the inheritors of the original conquerors out of Arabia, who were, in most instances, morally superior tot he civilized foes. Most Christians could not wait to become Muslims, so that they did not have to pay taxes. Arabs and Turks were both fundamentally incapable of the naval operations necessary to invade Europe. These were all provided by Europeans and Hebrew collaborators.

There seems to have been a period of Eastern Roman/Greek history from Justinian circa 540 down thru the early Islamic period to the advent of the Turk Arp Arslan, that Gibbon does not trust, noted repettition in the records, and actually glosses over as an opaque period.

The history expands wonderfully to focus on the tiny remnant of Rome at the crossroads of the world, to include Charlemagne, The Crusades, the rise of the Turks, Rise of the Slavs, of the Normans in Italy and beyond, strange heresies rising in Christian/Magi/Muslim Asia, to include a sack of Mecca and eventually spreading into Europe, a complete history of the Mongols, of Timur and back to the fall of Constantinople [a repetition of voluntary invader brockering by the so called guardians of the Faith[ down to the bleak history of the Papacy in Italy and France, with the sad story ending with Gibbon noting that he wished to leave this life “in charity,” even in regards to the 100% corrupt Papal state.

Chapter 71

The epilogue of The history of the decline and fall of the roman Empire, is placed directly after the two chapter account of the recreation of Rome as a crimminal republic, which was immediately hijacked by the bloody handed nobility, with 6 Popes declining to live in Rome in mortal fear, and hiding out in France. Eventually the Papacy is restored a becomes the financial empire it remains in altered form to this day.

A pleasing rendition of a “bull feast’ I which the nobility tried to redeem themselves by fighting one-on-one with a spear against as many wild bulls. 11 knights survived, 9 wounded 18. One might call it a draw for knights and bulls or a victory for the bulls. This demonstrates, to this mind, a thirst for ancient Arуan heroism over the debased financialism of Rome, in imitation of the Gladiatorial rites of wold. These were also an attempt to keep alive heroic virue if only in a proxy fashion.

In Chapter 71 Gibbon admits, that nearly 20 years earlier, he began his project, inspired by a tour of the roman ruins. He is more concerned with the decline of the buildings, than of the society, looking upon roman society as a merely cannibalistic process, that nevertheless expressed civic institutions he admired. The four causes he investigates for the decine of physical Rome are;

#1 Nature, which eh notes has ever been kindly disposed to the location of Rome on its seven hills, excepting the floods of the Tiber over the lower, outer portions of the city.

#2 Barbarians, who did nothing to damage the structure of buildings, and were only interested in portable goods. He dismisses here the notion that the Goths were descendants of an historic Odin who had fled from Azov to Sweden, yet admits he never seriously considered the theory.

#3 Romans, and their use and misuse of the material. Most of the damage was done by emperors, nobles and popes monetizing the ruins, even melting marble for cement to build their own feuding towers. The common people seem to have been content to garden and sjelter in the shadows of antiquity. The ruing class though, were driven by a thirst for power to destroy their patrimony.

#4 Feud and political strife fed the thirst to cannibalize the higher works of the past in service to the lower arguments of the present

Finally, Edward Gibbon, my teacher, mentions an Italian catholic was likewise his teacher and signs off, in June, 1787, at nearly the same time that the rebel colonies of America finally formed a nation in Philadelphia, that would rise to consume its Brittanic Mother, in many ways, as a second Rome.