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100-576: The first five of the six successions within this dynasty were notable in that the reigning emperor did not have a male heir, and had to adopt the candidate of his choice to be his successor. Under Roman law, an adoption established a bond legally as strong as that of kinship. Because of this, all but the first and last of the Nerva–Antonine emperors are called Adoptive Emperors . The importance of official adoption in Roman society has often been considered

200-513: A freedman could also be adopted. A slave might even be simultaneously manumitted and adopted by his former master, who became both his patron ( patronus ) and his "father". The adoption of a freedman placed his property under the control of his new paterfamilias ; it no longer belonged to him, but it would return to him along with the rest of his inheritance. The choice of a freedman for adoption may have been motivated most often by gaining access to his resources rather than securing lineage. In

300-404: A "vivid historical narrative, ranging widely over period and place and enriched by analysis and reflection." Unusually for the 18th century, Gibbon was never content with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible (though most of these were drawn from well-known printed editions). "I have always endeavoured," he says, "to draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as

400-498: A chronic and disfiguring inflammation that left Gibbon a lonely figure. As his condition worsened, he underwent numerous procedures to alleviate the condition, but with no enduring success. In early January, the last of a series of three operations caused an unremitting peritonitis to set in and spread, from which he died. The "English giant of the Enlightenment" finally succumbed at 12:45 pm, 16 January 1794 at age 56. He

500-568: A conscious repudiation of the principle of dynastic inheritance and has been deemed one of the factors of the period's prosperity. However, this was not a new practice. It was common for patrician families to adopt, and Roman emperors had adopted heirs in the past: the Emperor Augustus had adopted Tiberius , and the Emperor Claudius had adopted Nero . Julius Caesar , dictator perpetuo and considered to be instrumental in

600-695: A freedman, and might be a child resulting from concubinatus , though children were not especially desired from these unions. Provisions for retroactive legitimation became more capacious in late antiquity as family law was adapted during the Christianization of the Roman Empire , in particular under Constantine and Justinian . In the Classical period, legitimation might have been more common among former slaves. Since slaves lacked personhood under Roman law, they could neither contract

700-533: A grieving but composed Sheffield. His health began to fail critically in December, and at the turn of the new year, he was on his last legs. Among Edward Gibbon's maladies was gout. Gibbon is also believed to have suffered from an extreme case of scrotal swelling, probably a hydrocele testis , a condition that causes the scrotum to swell with fluid in a compartment overlying either testicle. In an age when close-fitting clothes were fashionable, his condition led to

800-678: A long reign dedicated to the cultural unification and consolidation of the empire, the Emperor Hadrian named Antoninus Pius his son and heir, under the condition that he adopt both Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. Hadrian died that same year, and Antoninus began a peaceful, benevolent reign. He adhered strictly to Roman traditions and institutions, and shared his power with the Roman Senate . Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus succeeded Antoninus Pius in 161 upon that emperor's death, and co-ruled until Verus' death in 169. Marcus continued

900-515: A lover, I obeyed as a son." He proceeded to cut off all contact with Curchod, even as she vowed to wait for him. Their final emotional break apparently came at Ferney , France, in early 1764, though they did see each other at least one more time a year later. Upon his return to England, Gibbon published his first book, Essai sur l'Étude de la Littérature in 1761, which produced an initial taste of celebrity and distinguished him, in Paris at least, as

1000-417: A male heir, and probably would have been employed mostly by former slaves legitimating the status of their own children born into slavery or outside a legally valid marriage. Roman women could own, inherit, and control property as citizens , and therefore could exercise prerogatives of the paterfamilias pertaining to ownership and inheritance. They played an increasingly significant role in succession and

1100-558: A man of letters. From 1759 to 1770, Gibbon served on active duty and in reserve with the South Hampshire Militia , his deactivation in December 1762 coinciding with the militia's dispersal at the end of the Seven Years' War . The following year, he returned, via Paris, to Lausanne, where he made the acquaintance of a "prudent worthy young man" William Guise. On 18 April 1764, he and Guise set off for Italy, crossed

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1200-399: A model for Isaac Asimov in his writing of The Foundation Trilogy , which he said involved "a little bit of cribbin' from the works of Edward Gibbon". Evelyn Waugh admired Gibbon's style, but not his secular viewpoint. In Waugh's 1950 novel Helena , the early Christian author Lactantius worries about the possibility of "'a false historian, with the mind of Cicero or Tacitus and

1300-505: A moment he described later as his "Capitoline vision": It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol , while the barefooted fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter , that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind. Womersley ( Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , p. 12) notes

1400-544: A penchant from his aunt for "theological controversy" bloomed under the influence of the deist or rationalist theologian Conyers Middleton (1683–1750), the author of Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers (1749). In that tract, Middleton denied the validity of such powers; Gibbon promptly objected, or so the argument used to run. The product of that disagreement, with some assistance from the work of Catholic Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), and that of

1500-588: A reading of Middleton is very unlikely, and was introduced only into the final draft of the "Memoirs" in 1792–93. Within weeks of his conversion, he was removed from Oxford and sent to live under the care and tutelage of Daniel Pavillard, Reformed pastor of Lausanne , Switzerland . There, he made one of his life's two great friendships, that of Jacques Georges Deyverdun (the French-language translator of Goethe 's The Sorrows of Young Werther ), and that of John Baker Holroyd (later Lord Sheffield) . Just

1600-460: A request for adrogatio could be denied if the would-be adoptive father already had children or was under the age of sixty and assumed able to procreate. Adoptio had some commonalities with emancipatio , the procedure by which an adult son was released from paternal potestas – regardless of age, Roman men and women remained in effect legal minors as long as their father was alive unless emancipated. The father's relinquishing of potestas over

1700-499: A second Lausanne sojourn (September 1783 to August 1787) where Gibbon reunited with his friend Deyverdun in leisurely comfort. By early 1787, he was "straining for the goal" and with great relief the project was finished in June. Gibbon later wrote: It was on the day, or rather the night, of 27 June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page in a summer-house in my garden...I will not dissemble

1800-416: A sense of duty, has always urged me to study the originals; and that, if they have sometimes eluded my search, I have carefully marked the secondary evidence, on whose faith a passage or a fact were reduced to depend." In this insistence upon the importance of primary sources, Gibbon is considered by many to be one of the first modern historians: In accuracy, thoroughness, lucidity, and comprehensive grasp of

1900-456: A sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood , or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation. Here, Gibbon first conceived the idea of composing a history of the city, later extended to the entire empire ,

2000-422: A successor on the basis of merit, but his longevity instead created an apparatus of centralized power from which his status as a private citizen could no longer be extricated. His fashioning of himself as "father of his country" enabled the transferral of his power over the Roman people in the same way that a paterfamilias of a family estate was bound to transfer his potestas whether or not the available successor

2100-583: A successor somewhere else; as soon as the Emperor could look towards a biological son to succeed him, adoptive succession was set aside. The dynasty may be broken up into the Nerva–Trajan dynasty (also called the Ulpian dynasty after Trajan's gentile name 'Ulpius') and Antonine dynasty (after their common name Antoninus). Except where otherwise noted, the notes below indicate that an individual's parentage

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2200-524: A successor, in part because Roman identity was based on citizenship with a visceral rejection of hereditary kingship. During the Principate , so called from Augustus's styling of himself as princeps (first among equals, in the manner of the princeps senatus ), emperors consolidated their power by making use of the institutions of Republican Rome rather than overthrowing them outright. Augustus's early intentions seem to have been to apprentice and promote

2300-483: A time when "the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of wisdom and virtue". Gibbon believed that these benevolent monarchs and their moderate policies were unusual and contrasted with their more tyrannical and oppressive successors. One hypothesis posits that adoptive succession arose because of a lack of biological heirs. All but the last of the adoptive emperors had no legitimate biological sons to succeed them. They were therefore obliged to pick

2400-404: A valid marriage nor institute an heir by means of a will. However, the quasi-marital union of contubernium was available to heterosexual slave couples with the owner's approval, and expressed an intent to marry if both parties gained rights of marriage and succession upon manumission. Because a male slave did not possess the standing to assert patriarchal potestas , the child of an enslaved father

2500-401: A vast subject, the 'History' is unsurpassable. It is the one English history which may be regarded as definitive...Whatever its shortcomings the book is artistically imposing as well as historically unimpeachable as a vast panorama of a great period. The subject of Gibbon's writing, as well as his ideas and style, have influenced other writers. Besides his influence on Churchill, Gibbon was also

2600-414: A way to ensure imperial succession . In contrast to modern adoption , Roman adoptio was neither designed nor intended to build emotionally satisfying families and support childrearing. Among all social classes, childless couples or those who wanted to expand the size of their families instead might foster children . Evidence is meager for the adoptio of young children for purposes other than securing

2700-473: A year and a half later, after his father threatened to disinherit him, on Christmas Day, 1754, he reconverted to Protestantism. "The various articles of the Romish creed," he wrote, "disappeared like a dream". He also met the one romance in his life: the daughter of the pastor of Crassy, a young woman named Suzanne Curchod , who was later to become the wife of Louis XVI's finance minister Jacques Necker , and

2800-613: A youth, Gibbon's health was under constant threat. He described himself as "a puny child, neglected by my Mother, starved by my nurse". At age nine, he was sent to Dr. Woddeson's school at Kingston upon Thames (now Kingston Grammar School ), shortly after which his mother died. He then took up residence in the Westminster School boarding house, owned by his adored "Aunt Kitty", Catherine Porten. Soon after she died in 1786, he remembered her as rescuing him from his mother's disdain, and imparting "the first rudiments of knowledge,

2900-437: Is as shown in the above family tree. Roman adoption Adoption in ancient Rome was primarily a legal procedure for transferring paternal power ( potestas ) to ensure succession in the male line within Roman patriarchal society . The Latin word adoptio refers broadly to "adoption", which was of two kinds: the transferral of potestas over a free person from one head of household to another; and adrogatio , when

3000-548: Is no evidence he ever made any use of the nomenclature of the Manlius Toquatus who adopted him. Cicero's own patrician son-in-law, Publius Cornelius Dolabella , followed the path of Clodius in becoming a tribune by having himself adopted by a plebeian Cornelius. Augustan legislation that granted privileges to fathers with multiple children and disadvantaged the childless also prompted adoptions of convenience. Adoption for this purpose became enough of an issue that by

3100-471: Is unclear whether or not the change of religion increased the amount of resources the empire spent on religion. Gibbon further argued that new attitudes in Christianity caused many Christians of wealth to renounce their lifestyles and enter a monastic lifestyle, and so stop participating in the support of the empire. However, while many Christians of wealth did become monastics, this paled in comparison to

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3200-423: The gens Julia in the will of his great uncle , Julius Caesar . He inherited Caesar's money, name, and auctoritas . As Augustus's central role in the Principate solidified, it became increasingly important for him to designate an heir. He first adopted his daughter Julia's three sons by Marcus Agrippa , renaming them Gaius Caesar , Lucius Caesar , and Agrippa Caesar . After the former two died young and

3300-520: The Pontifex Maximus . Because adoption law developed to support the particular institutions of Roman society, adrogatio could take place only in the city of Rome until the reign of Diocletian in the late third century. Adrogation of female adoptees became possible through imperial rescript in the Antonine era (AD 138–192), and under exceptional circumstances a woman could adopt in

3400-489: The adrogatio of Clodius as solely politically motivated, and Clodius was emancipated immediately after he had achieved his aim. Around the same time, a nominal adoption allowed Publius Cornelius Lentulus Spinther , son of the consul of 57 BC , to take a place in the College of Augurs by getting around the rule against having two members from the same gens . The adoption seems to have been entirely fictional, since there

3500-419: The early Republic , a freedman through adoption gained the same status as the freeborn citizen who freed him. By the time of Tiberius , the adopted freedman was regarded as an unemancipated son in matters of family law but held only the rights of freedpersons otherwise. Legislation that more closely regulated the varied statuses of liberti left the adoptee as a freedman who could not, for example, marry into

3600-422: The peculium rather than his private ownership. The development of adrogatio as a form of adoption is bound up with an early procedure for making a will that required the approval of the comitia calata , an assembly of the Roman people. Upon the testator's death, the named heir was in effect adopted by the deceased. The legislative act of adrogation was carried out by thirty magisterial lictors summoned by

3700-566: The rights of man . Gibbon's work has been praised for its style, his piquant epigrams and its effective irony. Winston Churchill memorably noted in My Early Life , "I set out upon...Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [and] was immediately dominated both by the story and the style. ...I devoured Gibbon. I rode triumphantly through it from end to end and enjoyed it all." Churchill modelled much of his own literary style on Gibbon's. Like Gibbon, he dedicated himself to producing

3800-579: The Alps, and after spending the summer in Florence arrived in Rome, via Lucca, Pisa, Livorno and Siena, in early October. In his autobiography, Gibbon vividly records his rapture when he finally neared "the great object of [my] pilgrimage": ...at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the eternal City . After

3900-475: The Antonine legacy after Verus' death as an unpretentious and gifted administrator and leader. He died in 180 and was followed by his biological son, Commodus. The rulers commonly known as the " Five Good Emperors " were Nerva , Trajan , Hadrian , Antoninus Pius , and Marcus Aurelius . The term was coined by Niccolò Machiavelli in his posthumously published book The Discourses on Livy from 1531: From

4000-505: The Earliest Account of Time (1747–1768). Following a stay at Bath in 1752 to improve his health at the age of 15, Gibbon was sent by his father to Magdalen College, Oxford , where he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner . He was ill-suited, however, to the college atmosphere, and later rued his 14 months there as the "most idle and unprofitable" of his life. Because he says so in his autobiography, it used to be thought that

4100-501: The Elizabethan Jesuit Robert Parsons (1546–1610), yielded the most memorable event of his time at Oxford: his conversion to Roman Catholicism on 8 June 1753. He was further "corrupted" by the 'free thinking' deism of the playwright and poet David Mallet ; and finally Gibbon's father, already "in despair," had had enough. David Womersley has shown, however, that Gibbon's claim to having been converted by

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4200-521: The Gospel History . Gibbon's Memoires Litteraires failed to gain any notoriety and was considered a flop by fellow historians and literary scholars. After he tended to his father's estate—which was in poor condition—enough remained for Gibbon to settle fashionably in London at 7 Bentinck Street free of financial concern. By February 1773, he was writing in earnest, but not without

4300-421: The Roman Empire , was published on 17 February 1776. Through 1777, the reading public eagerly consumed three editions, for which Gibbon was rewarded handsomely: two-thirds of the profits, amounting to approximately £1,000. Volumes II and III appeared on 1 March 1781, eventually rising "to a level with the previous volume in general esteem." Volume IV was finished in June 1784; the final two were completed during

4400-471: The Roman Empire fell due to its embrace of Christianity, is not widely accepted by scholars today. Gibbon argued that with the empire's new Christian character, large sums of wealth that would have otherwise been used in the secular affairs in promoting the state were transferred to promoting the activities of the Church. However, the pre-Christian empire also spent large financial sums on religious affairs and it

4500-567: The Romans, kinship was "biologically based but not biologically determined", and procedures such as adoption and divorce gave them greater latitude to restructure their families than was allowed in Christian Europe. Cicero said that adoption was an accepted way to ensure the hereditas (transmission) of three aspects of Roman family continuity: the family name ( nomen ) , wealth (pecunia) , and religious rites ( sacra ) . Adoption

4600-430: The adoptee had been acting sui iuris as a legal adult but assumed the status of unemancipated son for purposes of inheritance . Adoptio was a longstanding part of Roman family law pertaining to paternal responsibilities such as perpetuating the value of the family estate and ancestral rites ( sacra ) , which were concerns of the Roman property-owning classes and cultural elite. During the Principate , adoption became

4700-463: The chapters excoriated the church for "supplanting in an unnecessarily destructive way the great culture that preceded it" and for "the outrage of [practising] religious intolerance and warfare". Gibbon, in letters to Holroyd and others, expected some type of church-inspired backlash, but the harshness of the ensuing torrents exceeded anything he or his friends had anticipated. Contemporary detractors such as Joseph Priestley and Richard Watson stoked

4800-597: The consequent erosion of its martial character. Such a view echoes the outlook of the Greek historian Polybius, who similarly explained the decadent Greek world's eclipse by the ascendant Roman Republic in Mediterranean affairs. In this understanding of Gibbon, the process of Rome's decay was well underway before Christian adherents numbered a large proportion of the empire. Hence, although Gibbon might have seen Christianity as hastening Rome's fall, he did not consider it as

4900-607: The emperor, Nero . The Nerva-Antonine dynasty was also united by a series of adoptions. Nerva adopted the popular military leader Trajan . Trajan in turn took Publius Aelius Hadrianus as his protégé and, although the legitimacy of the process is debatable, Hadrian claimed to have been adopted and took the name Caesar Traianus Hadrianus when he became emperor. Hadrian adopted Lucius Ceionius Commodus, who changed his name to Lucius Aelius Caesar but predeceased Hadrian. Hadrian then adopted Titus Aurelius Fulvus Boionius Arrius Antoninus, on condition that Antoninus in turn adopt both

5000-431: The emperors who succeeded to the throne by birth, except Titus , were bad, all were good who succeeded by adoption, as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But as soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced. This run of adoptive emperors came to an end when Marcus Aurelius named his biological son, Commodus , as his heir. Adoption never became the official method of designating

5100-408: The existence of "good reasons" to doubt the statement's accuracy. Elaborating, Pocock ("Classical History," ¶ #2) refers to it as a likely "creation of memory" or a "literary invention", given that Gibbon, in his autobiography, claimed that his journal dated the reminiscence to 15 October, when in fact the journal gives no date. In June 1765, Gibbon returned to his father's house, remaining there until

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5200-407: The family line. In adopting an adult heir, the father "could see what he was getting". Adoption was carried out by the male who was head of his family, the paterfamilias , and his adopting did not make his wife a mother. Nor was marriage required; an adult bachelor could adopt in order to pass along his family name and potestas , as could a citizen eunuch (Latin spado ). A close relative

5300-414: The father was later manumitted through a procedure that granted him full citizenship, he could legitimate his child through adrogatio . Many Roman emperors came to power through adoption, either because their predecessors had no natural sons, or simply to ensure a smooth transition for the most capable candidate. Augustus , as he was known after he became the first Roman emperor , was adopted into

5400-442: The father's side might relinquish potestas over a son to provide a childless man with an adoptive heir. A pater who had no sons might adopt his daughter's husband to strengthen family lineage, but to avoid technical incest, he would first need to emancipate his daughter so that she was no longer legally a part of the family – the adoption would otherwise create a brother-sister relationship that Roman law regarded as consanguines ,

5500-418: The first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken my everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might be the future fate of my history, the life of the historian must be short and precarious. Volumes IV, V, and VI finally reached

5600-489: The first exercise of reason, and a taste for books which is still the pleasure and glory of my life". From 1747 Gibbon spent time at the family home in Buriton . By 1751, Gibbon's reading was already extensive and pointed toward his future pursuits: Laurence Echard 's Roman History (1713), William Howel(l)'s An Institution of General History (1680–85), and several of the 65 volumes of the acclaimed Universal History from

5700-623: The implacable enemies not only of the Roman government, but also of mankind. Gibbon is considered to be a son of the Enlightenment and this is reflected in his famous verdict on the history of the Middle Ages : "I have described the triumph of barbarism and religion." Politically, he rejected the radical egalitarian movements of the time, notably the American and French Revolutions , and dismissed overly rationalistic applications of

5800-478: The inheritance of property from the 2nd century BC through the 2nd century AD, but as an instrument for transferring paternal potestas , adoption was mainly a male-gendered practice. Formal adoption was practiced primarily for financial, social, and political purposes among the property-owning classes. Free working people for whom these interests were minimal had little need of the cumbersome legal procedure and instead fostered if they wished to rear children. For

5900-516: The late Republic through the Principate, most Roman women married sine manu , meaning that they remained part of their birth family and did not submit to their husband's potestas . Livia , the wife of Augustus, outlived him, and only upon his death did testamentary adoption make her a part of the Julian family. Illegitimacy does not appear to have carried much stigma in Roman society before

6000-422: The latter was exiled, Augustus adopted his stepson, Tiberius Claudius Nero , on the condition that he adopt his own nephew, Germanicus (who was also Augustus's great nephew by blood). Tiberius succeeded Augustus, and after Tiberius's death, Germanicus's son Caligula became emperor. Claudius adopted his stepson Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, who changed his name to Nero Claudius Caesar and succeeded Claudius as

6100-490: The latter's death in 1770. These five years were considered by Gibbon as the worst of his life, but he tried to remain busy by making early attempts at full histories. His first historical narrative, known as the History of Switzerland , representing Gibbon's love for Switzerland, was never finished nor published. Even under the guidance of Deyverdun, his German translator, Gibbon became too self-critical and completely abandoned

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6200-435: The most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which they committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene , where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives; and we are tempted to applaud the severe retaliation which was exercised by the arms of legions against a race of fanatics, whose dire and credulous superstition seemed to render them

6300-466: The mother of Madame de Staël . The two developed a warm affinity; Gibbon proceeded to propose marriage, but ultimately this was out of the question, blocked both by his father's staunch disapproval and Curchod's equally staunch reluctance to leave Switzerland. Gibbon returned to England in August 1758 to face his father. No refusal of the elder's wishes could be allowed. Gibbon put it this way: "I sighed as

6400-526: The nascent fire, but the most severe of these attacks was an "acrimonious" piece by the young cleric, Henry Edwards Davis. Gibbon's apparent antagonism to Christian doctrine spilled over into the Jewish faith, leading to charges of anti-Semitism . For example, he wrote: From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius, the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome, which repeatedly broke out in

6500-409: The natural son of the late Lucius Aelius and a promising young nephew of his wife . They ruled as Antoninus Pius , Lucius Verus and Marcus Aurelius respectively. Niccolò Machiavelli described them as The Five Good Emperors and attributed their success to having been chosen for the role: From the study of this history we may also learn how a good government is to be established; for while all

6600-542: The new Severan dynasty . Nerva was the first of the dynasty. Though his reign was short, it saw a partial reconciliation between the army, the senate and the commoners. Nerva adopted as his son the popular military leader Trajan . In turn, Hadrian succeeded Trajan; he had been the latter's heir presumptive, and averred that he had been adopted by him on Trajan's deathbed. The Antonines are four Roman Emperors who ruled between 138 and 192: Antoninus Pius , Marcus Aurelius , Lucius Verus and Commodus . In 138, after

6700-628: The occasional self-imposed distraction. He took to London society quite easily, joined the better social clubs (including Dr. Johnson 's Literary Club ), and looked in from time to time on his friend Holroyd in Sussex. He succeeded Oliver Goldsmith at the Royal Academy as 'professor in ancient history', an honorary but prestigious position. In late 1774, he was initiated as a Freemason of the Premier Grand Lodge of England . He

6800-423: The participants in the imperial bureaucracy. Although Gibbon further pointed out that the importance Christianity placed on peace caused a decline in the number of people serving the military, the decline was so small as to be negligible for the army's effectiveness. Many scholars argue that Gibbon did not in fact blame Christianity for the empire's fall, rather attributing its decline to the effects of luxury and

6900-512: The presence of the Duchess of Devonshire at Lausanne. Gibbon's wish that his 6,000-book library would not be locked up 'under the key of a jealous master' was effectively denied by Beckford who retained it in Lausanne until 1801 before inspecting it, then locking it up again until at least as late as 1818 before giving most of the books back to Gibbon's physician Dr Scholl who had helped negotiate

7000-531: The press in May 1788, their publication having been delayed since March so it could coincide with a dinner party celebrating Gibbon's 51st birthday (the 8th). Mounting a bandwagon of praise for the later volumes were such contemporary luminaries as Adam Smith , William Robertson , Adam Ferguson , Lord Camden , and Horace Walpole . Adam Smith told Gibbon that "by the universal assent of every man of taste and learning, whom I either know or correspond with, it sets you at

7100-413: The project after writing only 60 pages of text. Soon after abandoning his History of Switzerland , Gibbon made another attempt towards completing a full history. His second work, Memoires Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne , was a two-volume set describing the literary and social conditions of England at the time, such as Lord Lyttelton 's history of Henry II and Nathaniel Lardner 's The Credibility of

7200-560: The publication process alongside Lord Sheffield . With that accomplished, in 1789 it was back to Lausanne only to learn of and be "deeply affected" by the death of Deyverdun, who had willed Gibbon his home, La Grotte. He resided there with little commotion, took in the local society, received a visit from Sheffield in 1791, and "shared the common abhorrence" of the French Revolution . In 1793, word came of Lady Sheffield's death; Gibbon immediately left Lausanne and set sail to comfort

7300-515: The respect of those around them through good governance: Titus, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus, and Marcus had no need of praetorian cohorts, or of countless legions to guard them, but were defended by their own good lives, the good-will of their subjects, and the attachment of the senate. Edward Gibbon wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that their rule was

7400-555: The root cause. Gibbon's work has been criticised for its scathing view of the Christian church as laid down in chapters XV and XVI, a situation that resulted in the banning of the book in several countries. Gibbon was accused of disrespecting, and none too lightly, the character of Christian doctrine, by "treat[ing] the Christian church as a phenomenon of general history, not a special case admitting supernatural explanations and disallowing criticism of its adherents". More specifically,

7500-509: The sale in the first place. Beckford's annotated copy of the Decline and Fall turned up in Christie's in 1953, complete with his critique of what he considered the author's 'ludicrous self-complacency ... your frequent distortion of historical Truth to provoke a gibe, or excite a sneer ... your ignorance of oriental languages [etc.]'. Defunct A view frequently attributed to Gibbon, that

7600-428: The same as blood ties. Adoption of a stepson from the wife's previous marriage was another strategy, if the stepson had no children; after adoption, his offspring would enter the line as grandchildren of the adopting paterfamilias . The adoptee did not have to be a relative. Romans placed a high value on the social bonds of friendship ( amicitia ), and a childless man might adopt a friend or friend's son. Fostering

7700-421: The same opinion as Mr. El[l]iot." (Murray, p. 322.) The following year, owing to the good grace of Prime Minister Lord North , he was again returned to Parliament, this time for Lymington on a by-election. After several rewrites, with Gibbon "often tempted to throw away the labours of seven years," the first volume of what was to become his life's major achievement, The History of the Decline and Fall of

7800-482: The same way. In one documented case from the 3rd century, a woman whose sons had died was permitted to adopt her stepson. Since a woman did not transfer paternal potestas , however, adoption accomplished little that could not be achieved through exercising her rights under inheritance law. Testamentary adoption became more common during the late Republic. Octavian, the future Augustus, was adopted in this way by his maternal great-uncle Julius Caesar . Although adoptio

7900-416: The senatorial order even if he was adopted by a senator. In the late Republican era, Publius Clodius Pulcher famously subverted the usual course of "adopting up", surrendering his patrician status and becoming a nominal plebeian in order to qualify for the office of tribune . Plebeians had adopted patricians before, but the reasons are not always clear and were not always political. Cicero criticized

8000-492: The son in both cases took the form of a fictive sale , based on an archaic provision of the Twelve Tables (mid-5th century BC) that a son sold three times was thereafter released from his father's legal control. Adrogatio differed from adoptio in that the person adopted was already sui iuris ; another father did not have to surrender his potestas , and rather than extirpating the adoptee's previous family line,

8100-577: The son of Hadrian's original planned successor , Lucius Verus. Marcus Aurelius's naming of his son Commodus as heir was considered to be an unfortunate choice and the beginning of the Empire's decline. With the murder of Commodus in 192, the Nerva–Antonine dynasty came to an end. It was followed by a brief period of turbulence known as the Year of the Five Emperors which ended with the establishment of

8200-410: The study of this history, we may also learn how a good government is to be established; for while all the emperors who succeeded to the throne by birth, except Titus , were bad, all were good who succeeded by adoption, as in the case of the five from Nerva to Marcus. But as soon as the empire fell once more to the heirs by birth, its ruin recommenced. Machiavelli argued that these adopted emperors earned

8300-416: The time of Constantine I , as many forms of Roman marriage existed, some rather loosely defined, along with quasi-marital unions such as contubernium among slaves and monogamous concubinage ( concubinatus ) . Birth outside marriage was primarily at issue in matters of inheritance but was not a clearly defined status with debilities in law, as a principle of customary international law ( ius gentium )

8400-437: The time of Nero a senatorial decree had tried to block legal dodges. The historian Tacitus indicates that fictitious or "fake adoption" (simulata adoptio) could be detected by rapid emancipation once the benefit was realized – benefits including priority in the selection of provincial governors or candidates for office for men who had met the fatherhood quota. The restrictions under the decree are not preserved in full, but

8500-478: The town of Putney , Surrey . He had five brothers and one sister, all of whom died in infancy. His grandfather, also named Edward, had lost his assets as a result of the South Sea bubble stock-market collapse in 1720 but eventually regained much of his wealth. Gibbon's father thus inherited a substantial estate. His paternal grandmother, Catherine Acton, was granddaughter of Sir Walter Acton, 2nd Baronet . As

8600-430: The transition from Republic to Empire , adopted Gaius Octavius, who later became Augustus, Rome's first emperor. Moreover, there were often still family connections: Trajan adopted his first cousin once removed and great-nephew by marriage Hadrian, Hadrian made his half-nephew by marriage Antoninus Pius heir, and the latter adopted both Hadrian's half-great-nephew by marriage Marcus Aurelius (Antonius' nephew by marriage) and

8700-551: The two family lines were merged. An adrogated adoptee was likely to have inherited from the natural father whose death had left him sui iuris , consolidating two patrimonies. Ownership of anything belonging to the adoptee was legally transferred to the paterfamilias , though it was set aside as peculium , a fund or property for use by an unemancipated son or slave. When Tiberius was adopted in adulthood by Augustus , he thereafter observed this longstanding legal requirement by crediting any property he received through inheritance to

8800-528: The very head of the whole literary tribe at present existing in Europe." In November 1788, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society , the main proposer being his good friend Lord Sheffield. In 1783 Gibbon had been intrigued by the cleverness of Sheffield's 12-year-old eldest daughter, Maria , and he proposed to teach her himself. Over the following years he continued, creating a girl of sixteen who

8900-422: Was spurius , one whose father could not be legally identified as such—that is, illegitimate. Since the child's status was determined by the mother's, if a woman was manumitted before her partner and conceived a child with him after that, the child was spurius but freeborn; unlike freeborn children from a legal marriage, however, the child was born sui iuris , emancipated from the potestas of an adult male. If

9000-441: Was a practice aimed at furthering the succession of male privileges, both men and women could in effect "adopt" by passing along their property in a will with the condition that the heir carry on the family name (condicio nominis ferendi) . The role of women in passing property along the family line became "increasingly important". Technically, this was not adoption but the "institution of an heir." The advantage of this arrangement

9100-665: Was also, perhaps least productively in that same year, returned to the House of Commons for Liskeard , Cornwall through the intervention of his relative and patron, Edward Eliot . He became the archetypal back-bencher, benignly "mute" and "indifferent," his support of the Whig ministry invariably automatic. Gibbon lost the Liskeard seat in 1780 when Eliot joined the opposition, taking with him "the Electors of Leskeard [who] are commonly of

9200-414: Was an English essayist, historian, and politician. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire , published in six volumes between 1776 and 1789, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources , and its polemical criticism of organized religion . Edward Gibbon was born in 1737, the son of Edward and Judith Gibbon, at Lime Grove in

9300-416: Was appropriate for a man who had no legitimate children, but if there were already legitimate heirs, adoption risked diluting their inheritance and the social status that came with it. Romans tended to prefer small families of two or three children for this reason, though premodern rates of neonatal and childhood mortality , along with other factors, could be an unsought brake on family size that jeopardized

9400-401: Was both well educated, confident and determined to choose her own husband. Gibbon described her as a "mixture of just observation and lively imagery, the strong sense of a man expressed with the easy elegance of a female". The years following Gibbon's completion of The History were filled largely with sorrow and increasing physical discomfort. He had returned to London in late 1787 to oversee

9500-677: Was buried in the Sheffield Mausoleum attached to the north transept of the Church of St Mary and St Andrew, Fletching, East Sussex , having died in Fletching while staying with his great friend, Lord Sheffield . Gibbon's estate was valued at approximately £26,000. He left most of his property to cousins. As stipulated in his will, Sheffield oversaw the sale of his library at auction to William Beckford for £950. What happened next suggests that Beckford may have known of Gibbon's moralistic, 'impertinent animadversion' at his expense in

9600-464: Was fully meritorious. A major transition in the means of imperial succession marks the periodization of Roman Imperial history into the Dominate , when Diocletian replaced adoption with the consortium imperii , designation of an heir by appointing him partner in imperium . Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon FRS ( / ˈ ɡ ɪ b ən / ; 8 May 1737  – 16 January 1794)

9700-401: Was preferred as the adoptee, and a paterfamilias might adopt a grandson, especially if the grandson's father was not in the line of succession. The grandson might be his daughter's son, or the pater might have removed the boy's father from succession by emancipating him. One common pattern in Roman adoption was for a woman's childless brother to adopt one of her sons. A brother or cousin on

9800-480: Was preferred to adopting children of "low" birth or unknown parentage, and in Roman Egypt it was unlawful to adopt a male foundling. The paterfamilias generally transmitted his estate to an adoptee of his own rank, or the adoptee acquired the social rank of the adoptive family, with some exceptions. Most often adoption would have been a lateral move or a modest boost to the adoptee's standing and wealth, but

9900-494: Was that a child took its status from the mother. A freedwoman whose male partner remained enslaved might find it advantageous to assert that her child was fatherless and not conceived during her own servitude, so as to ensure the child's freeborn status. It was unusual for freeborn persons to legitimate a child born outside a legally valid marriage, and typically a man would not adopt his illegitimate child unless he had no other heirs. The adoptee could be ingenuus (freeborn) or

10000-438: Was that the testator did not have to assume patriarchal responsibilities for the adoptee while he was alive but had assured the continuity of the family name, rites, and estate after his death; the testamentary adoptee did not surrender his own status as a pater as he would in adrogation but received the benefits of inheritance. Adoption was also the means by which married women could become part of their husband's family. From

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