/lit/ - Literature

>>15947932

>>15947932
I've heard Gibbons has a stellar prose, which is always a good thing, even if his scholarship doesn't hold up today. You could supplement his works with those of more contemporary scholars; I'm sure someone's pointed out all his faults.

No, this is.

>>15947932
> Definitive
It only covers the fall of the empire, from Antonines onwards, so how can the difintive history when there’s about 1000s years of the republic, and the actual interesting shit like Caesar, Marcus Aurelius, Augustus and Trajan. So no, it’s only definitive in the fall of Rome. If you are reading it for the Byzantium stuff. Don’t. It’s extremely boring and he is unfairly critically, thanks to him he literally ruined the image of the eastern Roman Empire for historians for about 100 years. A good book on Byzantium (only if you are interested) is “Byzantium the surprising life of a Medieval empire by Judith Herrin, she does them justice. Also the Christianity component of his thesis is overblown imo

>>15947937
Chad

>>15948000
Early Rome & Punic Wars - Livy (some Plutarch in here as well)
Fall of the Republic to start of the Principate = Plutarch
Reign of Augustus = Cassius Dio
Tiberius to Vespasian = Tacitus
Vespasian to Commodus = JB Bury
Commodus to the Fall = Gibbon
Byzantium = JB Bury

Sinple really

>>15947946
Here in Germany, Gibbons is also called "the English Mommsen"

It's fun but pretty much none of his explanations are accepted nowadays

>>15948023
Chad butterball

>>15948299
Why ? What is the major difference between them?

>>15947946
>>15947932
I unironically want to read both

Btw, Mommsen taught law. I learned that in The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. You don't have to be a Historian™ lads

Read these:

>>15948452
Thanks

I picked up that set for like 10 dollars barely touched at a library sale. pretty nice.

>>15948452
Where did you get that from?

Anglo seething against Christianity

>>15948842

It's from the reading guide at the back of 'The Tragedy of Empire: From Constantine to the Destruction of Roman Italy.'

>>15947946
Basiert

>>15947932
the only definitive book on Rome is Livy's Ab Urbe Condita. The rest is LARP.

>>15947946
I found the first book to be horribly boring and stopped reading after that. Did I get pleb-filtered?

No, this is.

>>15948299
>>15948413

Not too much. People see that the book is old and figure it must be outdated and say this. He's using the same sources that form the backbone of modern analysis. Archeology and dating has changed our conception of a few things, but the politics and successions remain unchanged.

Gibbon is a giant in the field and books today still reference him. I read it at a very boring job right after finishing the History of Rome podcast, and read some later books and saw no jarring differences.

How many people on 4chan do you think have actually bothered reading a 3,000 page book? I know I only did because I had that boring as fuck job.

Now the prose is great and the tangents are full of top tier enlightenment era political philosophy, so even those are great. It's full of caveats on the sources too, it's not like he was uncritical.

Some great lines like the professionalization of the legions "elevating war into an art, and degrading it into a trade."

>>15948452
saved that shit, thanks bro

Paul Veyne. His book on seneca is excellent. he basically says foucault corrupted stoicism cuz he was dealing with his AIDS, and you see the current midtwit homosexuals evangelizing stoicism- massimo paglucci, ryan holiday, the cognitive therapy british nonce. fuck em all.

>>15949618
You aren't wrong for the most part, you just don't understand why.

>>15947932
>>15947946
Both are essential.

>>15947946
started reading the other day and so far it's basically Himmler's fanfiction

"Indo-German" my ass

>>15948452
Awful suggestions.

>Michael Kulikowski
No wonder.

>>15947932
it's like carlyle's history of french revolution---stylistic fantastic and culturally important but bad historiography

>>15950208
>Awful suggestions.
Why?

>>15950165
Supplemented by these more recent works:

"The Romans: From Village to Empire" by Mary T. Boatwright
"A History of the Roman World 753 to 146 BC" by H.H. Scullard
"The Roman Revolution" by Ronald Syme
"Caesar: Life of a Colossus" by Adrian Goldsworthy
"The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians" by Peter Heather
"The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400-1000" by Chris Wickham

>>15950182
Indo-German is the correct scientific term though?
I guess you can also say indo European, but it's a more recent term and wasn't really around when Mommsen wrote his books.

>>15948899
This, I hope they took those parts out for the abridged editions, they were good for a laugh though.

>>15947932
neckbeard tier history, 1700s equivalent of Guns Germs and Steel

no... this is massively outdated shit

>>15949618
It's also worth saying that one does not necessarily read a work of history solely for the historical accuracy - analysis of history, that is to say, figuring out why and how things happened is an important part of being a good historian, too. People don't read Tacitus for his unrivaled historical accuracy - they read Tacitus for his view and analysis of Roman history.

I'm an ESL so I'm not sure if that made sense but I hope it did.