I finally finished Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. All 8 volumes of the Folio Society Edition. Gibbon was the exemplar of the idea of the artist/scholar and his life masterwork. Others have labored a long time over one major work: Boswell, Proust, Cervantes. But Gibbon seems to me the epitome of this act of creation. A long tale, told with many asides and anecdotes. He takes us on a tour of what he calls "the greatest, perhaps, the most awful scene in the history of mankind". Was it? In many ways yes. It was the formal end of "classical" civilization. But it was also the beginnings of modern civilization as well. Europe, the Mideast, Asia as we know it came from the ashes of this fall. Lets provide a few notes: 1. First the Question: Was it the greatest and most awful scene in the history of mankind? We know so little of the actual history of mankind it is hard to judge. To each person's end it is the most awful. When the last population o...