Gibbon's Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire

Ruins of the Roman Forum (1742) by Canaletto

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'It was at Rome, on the fifteenth of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the City first started to my mind.'

So wrote Edward Gibbon (1737-94), author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, of what he described as his 'Capitoline Vision'. Gibbon's magnum opus was published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788.

Gibbon wrote about the excitement he felt on reaching Rome in his memoirs: '...at the distance of twenty-five years I can neither forget nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod, with a lofty step the ruins of the Forum; each memorable spot where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Caesar fell, was at once present to my eye; and several days of intoxication were lost or enjoyed before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation'.

We get a good idea of how the Forum would have looked on Gibbon's trip  in a set of five paintings that the Venetian artist Canaletto (1697-1768) executed in 1742. The paintings are now in the Royal Collection in London.  

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