All empires fall. But none fell so far, nor left behind such a magnificent ruin, as Rome. In this foundational work of history, Edward Gibbon conducts the ultimate autopsy of a civilization. With brilliant and witty prose, he chronicles over a thousand years of decay, dissecting the causes—from corruption in the Senate to the revolutionary rise of Christianity. This is the epic story of how the ancient world died, and how the modern one struggled to be born from its ashes.