Today's installment concludes Roman Empire's Government,our selection from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon

If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he

Their united reigns are possibly the only period of history in which the happiness of a great people was the sole object of government.Continuing

The soldiers were seldom roused to that fatal sense of their own strength, and of the weakness of the civil authority, which was, before and

The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the

The usual number of consuls, praetors, and tribunes, were annually invested with their respective ensigns of office, and continued to discharge some

In his camp the general exercised an absolute power of life and death; his jurisdiction was not confined by any forms of trial, or rules of