GibbonChapter4

Quotations from Chapter 4 of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ("The Cruelty, Follies, and Murder of Commodus --- Election of Pertinax --- His Attempts to reform the State --- His Assassination by the Praetorian Guards (180 - 193 A.D.)"):

:"But the power of instruction is seldom of much efficacy, except in those happy dispositions where it is almost superfluous."

:"Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state reason. He promised only to betray; he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation."

(see also Gibbon - Table of Contents, Gibbon - Thoughts Upon Reading, ... and http://www.his.com/~z/gibbon.html for a single-page presentation of Gibbon quotes)

TopicLiterature

(correlates: Gibbon - Table of Contents, Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam, YoursTruly, ...)