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Gibbon offers an explanation for why the Roman Empire fell, a task made difficult by a lack of comprehensive written sources, though he was not the only historian to tackle the subject.
According to Gibbon, the Roman Empire succumbed to barbarian invasions in large part due to the gradual loss of civic virtue among its citizens. They had become weak, outsourcing their duties to defend their Empire to barbarian mercenaries, who then became so numerous and ingrained that they were able to take over the Empire. Romans, he believed, had become effeminate, unwilling to live a tougher, ""manly"" military lifestyle. He further blames the degeneracy of the Roman army and the Praetorian guards. In addition, Gibbon argued that Christianity created a belief that a better life existed after death, which fostered an indifference to the present among Roman citizens, thus sapping their desire to sacrifice for the Empire. He also believed its comparative pacifism tended to hamper the traditional Roman martial spirit. Finally, like other Enlightenment thinkers, Gibbon held in contempt the Middle Ages as a priest-ridden, superstitious, dark age. It was not until his own age of reason and rational thought, it was believed, that human history could resume its progress.
Gibbon sees the primary catalyst of the empire's initial decay and eventual collapse in the Praetorian Guard, instituted as a special class of soldiers permanently encamped in a commanding position within Rome, a seed planted by Augustus at the establishment of the empire. As Gibbon calls them at the outset of Chapter V: The Praetorian bands, whose licentious fury was the first symptom and cause of the decline of the Roman empire... He cites repeated examples of this special force abusing its power with calamitous results, including numerous instances of imperial assassination and demands of ever-increasing pay.

Gibbon provides the reader with a glimpse of his thought process with extensive notes along the body of the text, a precursor to the modern use of footnotes. Gibbon's footnotes are famous for their idiosyncratic and often humorous style, and have been called "Gibbon's table talk." They provide an entertaining moral commentary on both ancient Rome and 18th-century Great Britain. This technique enabled Gibbon to compare ancient Rome to modern times. Gibbon's work advocates a rationalist and progressive view of history.
Gibbon's citations provide in-depth detail regarding his use of sources for his work, which included documents dating back to ancient Rome. The detail within his asides and his care in noting the importance of each document is a precursor to modern-day historical footnoting methodology.
The work is notable for its erratic but exhaustively documented notes and research. John Bury, following him 113 years later with his own "History of the Later Roman Empire," utilized much of the same research, and commended the depth and accuracy of Gibbon's work. It is notable that Bury, over a century after Gibbon, and Heather, over a century after Bury, both based much of their own work on Gibbon's factual research. Both found little to argue with his facts, though both disagreed with his theories, primarily on Christianity as a prime factor in the Empire's decline and fall. Unusual for the 18th century, Gibbon was notably not content with secondhand accounts when the primary sources were accessible, and used them so well that even today historians still cite his work as the definitive factual history of the western empire. "I have always endeavoured," Gibbon wrote, "to draw from the fountain-head; that my curiosity, as well as 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." The Decline and Fall is a literary monument and a massive step forward in historical method.

Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon (27 April 1737 – 16 January 1794) was the supreme historian of the Enlightenment, and is best-known as the author of the monumental The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, often considered the greatest historical work written in English.

Edward Gibbon was born in Putney in South London into a prosperous family. His father was a wealthy Tory member of Parliament who went into seclusion and left his son to the care of an aunt. Gibbon was a sickly child and his education at Westminster and at Magdalen College, Oxford, was irregular. According to Gibbon's own explanation he was too bashful to spend his time in taverns, but his studies ended anyway after one year: he was expelled for turning to Roman Catholicism - a decision which was undoubtedly directed against one of his intellectually lazy Anglican college tutors. In 1753 Gibbon was sent by his father to Lausanne, Switzerland. He boarded with a Calvinist pastor and scholar, who was very demanding in his teaching, and rejoined the Anglican fold. In Lausanne he fell in love with Suzanne Curchod, who eventually married Jacques Necker, a banker. Their relationship was ended by his father, and Gibbon remained unmarried for the rest of his life.

From 1759 to 1762 Gibbon hold a commission in the Hampshire militia, reaching the rank of colonel. Before 1763 Gibbon had considered various subjects as worthy of the type of philosophical analysis that he wished to apply to history: the life of Sir Walter Raleigh, the history of Switzerland, and others. However, he felt that he had nothing original to say about Elizabethan politics and he could not read German.

In 1764 he visited Rome and was inspired to write the history of the city from the death of Marcus Aurelius to the year 1453. After his father died Gibbon found himself in some difficulties, but he was able to settle in London to proceed with his great work. The first volume appeared in 1776, with a certain amount of public reaction to Gibbon's ironical treatment of the rise of Christianity and the actions of early church fathers. Like Voltaire, Gibbon was himself a deist who had little appreciation of the metaphysical side of religion. He examined the secular side of religion as a social phenomenon - religion did not have for Gibbon special sanctity. But Christianity had a special role in the fall of the Roman empire: "... the church and even the state were distracted by religious factions, whose conflicts were sometimes bloody and always implacable; the attention of the emperors was diverted from camps to synods; the Roman world was oppressed by a new species of tyranny, and the persecuted sects became the secret enemies of their country."

Between 1774 and 1783 Gibbon sat in the House of Commons, and became a lord commissioner of trade and plantations, partly because he was considered a nuisance as a politician. In 1774 he was elected to Dr Johnson's Club. From 1783 Gibbon spent much of his time in Lausanne and in England with Lord Sheffield (John Baker Holroy) in his Sussex and London houses.

The last three volumes of Decline and Fall were published in 1788. The book was a bestseller, and offered the reading public a vivid narrative of the past instead of an antiquarian picture.