I can give you many examples that argue we peaked with Edward Gibbon.
Is A New Game Even Necessary?
- Thread starter Verevoof
- Start date
Yes.
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
It's kind of hilarious because I consider The History and the Decline of the Roman Empire to be my personal bugbear for one of the worst, inaccurate, and most politically dangerous works ever written. It's like my personal enemy in academy because I've stopped to explain how much I hate it for decades on forums.
I swear to God if you’re on that dumb fucking bandwagon of it being “antisemitic” I’m gonna put some dirt in your eye
CT Phipps
Carbon Dated and Proud
Gibbons antireligion views is thankfully applied to both Christians and Jews. I'd argue that he's created a completely fictitious "Roman" though.
No, it's just fucking stupid and reflects the guys Enlightenment views of "Weird mystical religion destroyed the Roman Empire's values." Gibbon's idea of the Romans as this stoic logic based Platonic society is one of the dumbest things ever written because they were an incredibly religious mystical society full of superstition.
It also depends on the idea of the Fall of the Western Roman Empire being the end of history versus, you know, it moving its power base East was some incredible seminal moment of failure versus economics. Which is to say it's not that he IGNORES the Byzantine Empire existing for a 1000 years but he really-really fucking downplays it.
And yes, Gibbon's take on history created the view the Roman Empire became decadent and fell to barbarians versus, "Man, it's much more profitable to work out of Turkey." People constantly cite the ideas he espoused of cultures falling prey to losing their values to build much much more dangerous ideologies.