Preface

Decline and Fall scholarship flies high, sometimes very high, but neglects the rudimentary  needs of common readers to be able to follow Gibbon’s text, particularly the many ancient, medieval, and 18th century places he names, and his many footnote quotations in foreign languages. The resources offered here are intended to help meet the need and begin to enrich understanding and enjoyment of a wondrous book.

This effort has called on Google Books, Archive.org, Wikipedia, the David Rumsey Historical Map Collection, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Thesaurus Graecae Linguae, and other resources, and the Link+ Union Catalog and interlibrary loan services of California and Nevada libraries, with holdings of 9 million books.

I hope someday scholars will hyperlink all the Decline and Fall source citations to the book editions Gibbon used.