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From: shebs@utah-cs.UUCP (Stanley Shebs)
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: Re: Greek and Roman Classics
Message-ID: <2364@utah-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 4-Jan-84 21:16:28 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-cs.2364
Posted: Wed Jan  4 21:16:28 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jan-84 02:19:06 EST
References: <633@ihuxw.UUCP> dartvax.557
Lines: 26

As additional reading, I'd like to suggest Gibbon's Decline and Fall
of the Roman Empire - the unabridged version.  It covers the period
from the Antonines to the fall of Constantinople, and is absolutely
fascinating.  Gibbon has done us the service of wading through the
works of many obscure historians, most of whose works have never been
translated.  His style is quite readable, and he doesn't refrain from
making editorial comments at appropriate places.  The footnotes are
intriguing, although many are in Latin or Greek!  The days are past
when educated people were familiar with those languages...

Among other things, there are the eyewitness accounts of Attila and
other famous barbarians, the lives of the great generals who fought
them, accounts of *all* the emperors including the ones that reigned
for only months or weeks, and details of the infighting between the
early Christian sects (the one between the Homoousians and the Homoiousians
was particularly bitter, and led to the Arian heresy - all from the
difference of a single letter!).  Gibbon himself is very "philosophic",
and treats the religious controversies with impartiality and not a 
little wit.

I personally am about 2/3 through - reading it is definitely a project!
But it *is* satisfying my curiosity about what actually happened during
those "Dark Ages"...

							stan the l.h.
							utah-cs!shebs