Saturday, June 20, 2020
Lack of Historical Materials
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Chapter X (on the period from 248 to 268 AD):
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The confusion of the times and the scarcity of authentic memorials oppose equal difficulties to the historian, who attempts to preserve a clear and unbroken thread of narration. Surrounded with imperfect fragments, always concise, often obscure, and sometimes contradictory, he is reduced to collect, to compare, and to conjecture: and though he ought never to place his conjectures in the rank of facts, yet the knowledge of human nature, and of the sure operation of its fierce and unrestrained passions, might, on some occasions, supply the want of historical materials.
