"If," write Edward Gibbon," a man were called upon to fix the period in the history of the world when the condition of the human race were most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." Yet in the next century the Roman Empire collapsed into civil wars. When in 285 AD Diocletion pulled the empire together again, there was little left of the prosperity of Gibbon's period. Several factors can be attributed to the empire's decline. The fall of the Roman Empire weas the direct result of a crumbling economy and the rising apathy of its citizens.
It seems clear, then, that the causes of the collapse must, like hidden cancers, have been developing during Gibbon's period of happiness and prosperity. Some symptoms can be recognized. To take one example, in the first century of the empire, there had still been a vigorous literature (Rempel Online). However, in the second century AD from Hadrian onward, with a few exceptions, Latin literature is overcome by a sort of indolent apathy.
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