Is there any history book in English, more compelling, more lucid, more tastefully written than Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire? if there is, then I haven’t read it. I realise that it is a sweeping statement and I shall humbly offer an apology to anyone who points out to me an equally -- and possibly more -- monumental work than Decline and Fall.

I had tears in my eyes when I read the last sentence of his seventy first chapter: "It was among the ruins of the Capital that I first conceived the idea of that work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candour of the public."

Gibbon’s work was originally published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788 (AD). It is a history of seventeen centuries, but it also encompasses anthropology, sociology, geography and ethnography. Above all it is an immortal work of literature, and the publishers are quite right when they claim that it can only perish with the language itself.

One of the biggest advancements of the 18th century, known as the age of Enlightenment, was the rise of English prose. The novel gained maturity; the form, known as essay, came into its own, and Samuel Johnson produced the first comprehensive dictionary of English language. Hazlitt, Pope, Addison, Steele, to name but four luminaries, wrote excellent prose, but none of them, not even the redoubtable Dr Johnson, who knew the root and essence of every word, has written an epic with such sustained eloquence as the historian, Edward Gibbon.

Gibbon was, indeed, "the giant of the Enlightenment".

His style, throughout, retains an impeccable balance in the structure of his sentences. When talking of hard times that befell the subjects of Emperor Julian, he writes:

"The inclemency of the season had affected the harvest of Syria and the price of bread in the markets of Antioch had naturally risen in proportion to the scarcity of corn. But the fair and reasonable proportion was soon violated by the rapacious arts of monopoly. In this unequal contest, in which the produce of the land is claimed by one party as his exclusive property, is used by another as lucrative object of trade and is required by a third for the daily and necessary support of life; all the profits of the intermediate agents are accumulated on the head of the defenceless consumers."

His sentences are constructed so meticulously that you never become conscious of their length.

The breadth and depth of Gibbon’s learning are astounding. From the number of historical sources that he cites it is evident that, apart from his ecclesiastical and non-historical studies, he read thousands of books which he digested and approached critically. This is evident from his detailed and concise footnotes.

Describing the emperor Gordian he writes:

"Twenty two acknowledged concubines and a library of sixty-two thousand volumes attested the variety of his inclinations and from the productions which he left behind him, it appears that the former as well as the latter were designed for use rather than ostentation."

This amused way of looking at his subject matter is the hallmark of Gibbon’s polished and elegant style. The use of the same metaphor ‘productions’ to two different and diverse objects (books and bastards) is a masterly stroke.

From the introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition of Decline and Fall written by Antony Lentin and Brian Norman, we learn that Gibbon, after having worked for seven years on the order of his narrative, was often tempted to cast away the whole exercise because he was not entirely satisfied with his style. "I made many experiments before I could hit the middle one between a dull chronicle and a rhetorical declamation", he writes in his Memoirs.

You would have thought that a man, for whom books alone were the pleasure and glory of his life, would scarcely find time to socialise, but he did. When he moved to London, at the age of twenty eight, he became known as a man of fashion joining the better social clubs including Dr. Johnson’s Literary Club. Lentin and Norman tell us that he "cut a foppish and out of the ordinary figure as a Frenchified man of the world, snuffbox in hand, pot-bellied figure and spindly legs". At the age of thirty eight he became a Member of Parliament.

The Roman empire extended to almost half the known world in the first three or four centuries. The towns and cities that they subdued or destroyed in Syria and Persia had fascinating, unpronounceable names: Ctesephon Maogamalina, Circebium etc. Here is a masterpiece of understatement:

"The soldiers of Julian rushed impetuously into the town, and, after the full gratification of every military appetite, Maogamalcha was reduced to ashes."

Describing the intrigues that took place after the assassination of the Roman Emperor, Petrinox, he ruminates: "Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of public transaction, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of courage, in the other, only a defect of power. Yet the art of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample of privileges of state-reason. He promised only to betray, he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally bind oaths of treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation."

Where or where do you find such sublime prose?

Gibbon’s knowledge of Islam as well as Arabian history must have jolted the other intellectuals of the age of Enlightenment for they still harboured the notion that the ‘Turk’ (the word used for any Muslim in the Middle East) was a crude barbarian:

The Arabian poets were the historians and moralists of the age, and if they sympathised with prejudices, they inspired and crowned the virtues of their countrymen. The indissoluble union of generosity and valour was the darling theme of their song; and, when they pointed their keenest satire against a despicable race, they, affirmed, in the bitterness of reproach, that the men knew not how to give nor the women to deny. The ferocious Bedoweens, the terror of the desert, embrace, without inquiry or hesitation, the stranger who dares to confide in their honour and to enter into their tent. His treatment is kind and respectful; he shares the wealth and the poverty of his host, and after a needful repose, he is dismissed on his way, with thanks with blessings and perhaps with gifts."

"The experience of history," writes Professor Trevor Roper, "exalts and enlarges the horizon of our intellectual view". Gibbon’s work needs to be read and re-read -- and re-read.