The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

1926

Brasch DG311 GE142 1926

London: Methuen

Edward Gibbon’s (1737-1794) The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was the first of its kind in historical writing and relied heavily on primary sources. Isaac Asimov (1920-1992), the prolific Science Fiction writer, acknowledges, in his poem The Foundation of Science Fiction Success, his use of Gibbon’s seminal work and that of Thucydides. There are parallels between Asimov’s recurrent theme of ‘galactic empire’ and the Empire of the ancient Romans. In turn, as Peter Bondanella informs, Asimov’s ‘Gibbonian historical structure provided the nucleus around which the most successful film trilogy of all time was constructed’ – George Lucas’s Star Wars. May the force be with you!