Ex Tempore Edward Gibbon and the Five Good Emperors 1

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 would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus. The vast extent of the Roman Empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom.1

The above is a quote from Volume One of Edward Gibbon’s The Histo-ry of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He sings high praise of

five of the seven emperors from the Nerva-Antonine dynasty. The emper-ors of this dynasty were in charge of the Roman Empire during the peri-od when its borders reached the furthest. Today, these emperors are still seen as important and generally good examples of how to be a ruler. So where did he get this idea from?

This essay will try to establish whether Gibbon’s opinion on these emperors was influenced by Roman propaganda. Did Gibbon trust his sources too much? Roman emperors used propaganda extensively in order to make the populace believe that they were perfect rulers. Did Gibbon also fall into this trap? Or did he understand the propagandistic nature of his sources? In order to find out the truth about these questions, this essay will take a closer look at some of the sources Gibbon used but also at The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire itself.

According to J.G.A. Pocock, a prolific and famous political histori-an from the twentieth century, Gibbon’s work was influenced by Niccolò Machiavelli’s ideas about the relation between virtue and corruption.2 These ideas are not explicitly mentioned by Gibbon, but, according to Pocock, Gibbon is part of the same political tradition, civic humanism, as Machiavelli when laying out his reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire.3 The hypothesis of this essay follows from these conclusions by

1 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I (London 1776), Chapter III, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visited January 24th 2022).2 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume: Gibbon as Civic Humanist and Philosophical Historian’, Daedalus 105:3 (1976) 153-169, there 154.3 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume’, 156.

Edward Gibbon and the Five Good Emperors

Bastiaan van Dijk

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Pocock: Gibbon idealized Machiavelli’s ideas about civic humanism and wanted to show that this (in his eyes) ideal form of state was attainable; one only needed to look in the past at the period of the five good emper-ors. By being influenced by his sources in such a manner as the emperors themselves intended, Gibbon obtained a tainted image of the past. There-fore, it became a product of its time, in which ideas from the Enlighten-ment became widespread and popular.

Gibbon and his world

In 1764 Edward Gibbon set off on a Grand Tour of Italy for two years.4 It was during this journey that Gibbon acquired the inspiration to write his magnum opus. In his Memoirs of My Life and Writings he says: ‘It was at Rome, on 15 October, 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capi-tol while the barefooted friars were singing Vespers in the temple of Jupi-ter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind’.5 It is important to note, that the Grand Tour was an essential part of a proper Enlightened education, because it helps to understand the world that shaped Gibbon’s thinking.6 This, in turn, will help to assess Gibbon’s work within the proper context.

That Gibbon seems to be part of the Enlightenment can also be seen in his work. An example can already be found in the introduction of this essay. In ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume’, J.G.A. Pocock states that it is his aim ‘to disentangle the elements of philosophic history which are latent in Gibbon’s thought and to consider how far they provide guiding ideas in The Decline and Fall’.7 Pocock primarily focuses on how Gibbon is influenced by Machiavelli’s ideas on civic humanism. This can be seen in the choice Gibbon made of where to start The Decline and Fall: the peri-od of the Antonine emperors. According to Pocock, Gibbon saw this peri-od in Roman imperial history as a ‘silver moment’; a ‘moment of relax-ation in the downward swing of a civilization’, a moment in which the inevitable degeneration that comes with expansion of the empire had

4 L. Damrosch, The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age (New Haven-London 2019) 327-328; M. Cohen, ‘The Grand Tour. Language, National Identity and Masculinity’, Changing English 8:2 (2001) 133. A Grand Tour was a journey through Europe that a young man from the upper classes in the eighteenth century would under-take to learn more about culture and history, as well as to hone his skills in French and Latin.5 E. Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings (London 1796) 129. 6 M. Cohen, ‘The Grand Tour. Language, National Identity and Masculinity’, Chan-ging English 8:2 (2001) 129-141, there 130.7 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Between Machiavelli and Hume’, 153.

Ex Tempore Edward Gibbon and the Five Good Emperors 3

not yet triumphed over progress.8 The Roman Empire had thus already begun its decline, Gibbon implied, but this decline came to a temporary halt during the reign of the five good emperors. The creative endeavours of the Roman citizens had not yet destroyed their will to civic duty. This civic duty, then, should lead to a society in which its citizens become refined, enlightened and specialized. This had to be combined with char-acteristics which are seemingly opposite to the aforementioned: those of a warrior, citizen, and patriot. According to Pocock, Gibbon implies that the impossibility of combining these characteristics within one society is the chief reason for the decline and, ultimately, the fall of the Roman Empire.9 For when a civilian becomes more refined and specialized, at the same time they become less willing to take up arms to defend their state. As a result of this theory, Gibbon does seem to fall squarely with-in Enlightenment thinking. Hume, Smith, Jefferson and Montesquieu, all of whom are considered to be prominent Enlightenment thinkers, subscribed to this view of civic humanism as well, following Machiavel-li’s ideas.10

However, there is also an important distinction to be made between Gibbon and traditional Enlightenment philosophy. According to classi-cist C. Kelly, Gibbon did not entirely fit into the Enlightenment tradi-tion. Kelly mentions how Gibbon did not write The Decline and Fall to find inevitable cycles or universal laws of history. However, contempo-raries such as Voltaire and Montesquieu did write history for this very reason.11 Instead, Gibbon tried to make sense of the past by ordering seemingly chaotic historical periods. In this way, he hoped to find defin-ing moments, or ‘nice and secret springs of actions’, which shaped and controlled society.12 One such moment could be the time in history that he chose to start The Decline and Fall with, namely the time of the five good emperors. This was a ‘silver moment’, as mentioned in the previous para-graph. This choice, then, is used by Pocock as evidence of Enlightenment thinking, whereas Kelly could argue that choosing such a moment as a defining one in history would distinguish Gibbon from other Enlight-ened historians, because it shows that Gibbon was not looking for cycles or universal laws of history.

8 Ibidem, 155-156. 9 Ibidem.10 Ibidem. 11 C. Kelly, ‘A Grand Tour: Reading Gibbon’s ‘Decline and Fall’’, Greece & Rome 44:1 (1997) 39-58, there 41. 12 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume III (London 1781), Chapter XXVII, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visi-ted January 24th 2022)..

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However, whether such a thing as “traditional Enlightenment philosophy” even exists, is also a topic of debate. Scholars these days, such as S. Conrad, point to the Eurocentric view into the Enlightenment and argue that it has its roots from all over the world.13 When regarding Enlightenment thinkers, however, conventionally only European ones are mentioned (as has happened in this essay so far, as well). Anoth-er important point made by Conrad is that ‘Enlightenment ideas need to be understood as a response to cross-border interaction and global integration’.14 Enlightenment, then, is too narrowly defined when look-ing at it through a European lens.

Whether Gibbon deserves to be called Enlightened or not, it is clear that he had important similarities with influential thinkers of his time, as well as differences. His views derived from Machiavelli on civic human-ism are very much a sign of eighteenth century intellectual European thinking, as Pocock explained. He also grew up in the traditional intel-lectual climate of his time, which inspired him to write his work. But the way in which he thought about history and its driving and decisive forc-es was not entirely in line with his (European) contemporaries. His views on history therefore seem to stand out from those of his contemporaries, despite growing up in a similar milieu to them, but not enough to consid-er his work timeless or even from that of a different age.

Sources that Gibbon did and did not use

Three sources that are used by Gibbon will be evaluated for this research. The Decline and Fall is such a vast work that it would be too much for this paper to evaluate more sources, let alone all of them. The three sourc-es in question are picked with the intent to display a variety of authors and contexts, so that a more complete image can be formed of Gibbon’s influences. This chapter will also discuss which sources were not used by Gibbon, something that is equally important in order to discover his potential biases.

The first source that springs into view is the Historia Augusta. That is because Gibbon explicitly mentions it in the preface of the first volume.15 He remarks how there are many reported authors of this work and during the time in which Gibbon lived, there was much speculation about who wrote which part. Therefore, he wrote: ‘I have quoted them with-out distinction, under the general and well-known title of the Augustan

13 S. Conrad, ‘Enlightenment in Global History: A Historiographical Critique’, The American Historical Review 117:4 (2012) 999-1027, there 1001. 14 Ibidem. 15 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Preface, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visited January 24th 2022).

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History.’16 The first part of the research conducted for this paper is there-fore based upon the occasions where Gibbon uses the Historia Augusta as a source when talking about his views on one or more of the emperors in question. The Historia Augusta is referenced well over two hundred times in The Decline and Fall, so it can rightly be called a very important and influential source for Gibbon. However, this source also comes with an important caveat. An ancient historian born in the nineteenth centu-ry, Hermann Dessau, extensively researched the Historia Augusta. In his famous article published in 1889, he showed that, contrary to what histo-rians at the time believed, it was not written by six authors at the begin-ning of the fourth century, but rather by one author at the end of the fourth century and that it was also full of fiction.17 This changed the way historians looked at this ancient source. It also has implications for the research on propaganda, such as this paper; that will be elaborated on in the next chapter. The reason for mentioning Dessau’s research here is to establish that Gibbon used the source under the assumption that it was written by several authors, even though there were already disputes about this in his time (as he himself acknowledged).18 He nonetheless extensively used it as a source for his own work.

A second source to be looked at is Pliny the Younger’s Panegyricus Traiani. This work was intended to give praise to the emperor Trajan, one of the five emperors which this paper is concerned with. Gibbon uses this source in his work a few times when talking about Trajan. The Panegyricus Traiani was written early in Trajan’s reign and thus it is a source directly from that time period. Another interesting aspect of this source is that the Historia Augusta is largely based on panegyrics (as well as other types of sources) to reconstruct the lives of several emperors in literary form.19 It is therefore intriguing to evaluate both of these sources together and look at Gibbon’s use of them. Additionally, it is one of the few literary primary sources available about Trajan; Suetonius’ famous De vita Caesarum ends

16 Ibidem. 17 M. Meckler, ‘The Beginning of the “Historia Augusta”’, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 45:3 (1996) 364-375, there 364; H. Dessau, ‘Über Zeit und Persönlichkeit der Scriptores Historiae Augustae’, Hermes 24:3 (1889) 337-392, there 388. Hermann Dessau’s article goes into great length to explain exactly why and where he doubts the originati-on of the author and the contents of the Historia Augusta. For this paper, however, it will suffice to point out that Dessau changed the way historians viewed the Historia Augusta and accepted that much of the information it holds seems fabricated. 18 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Preface, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visited January 24th 2022).19 D. Burgersdijk, ‘Pliny’s Panegyricus and the Historia Augusta’, Arethusa 46:2 (2013) 289-312, there 290.

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with Domitian and the Historia Augusta starts with Hadrian.20 This means that there are no biographic sources for the emperors Nerva and Trajan. It may also be important to note here the distinction between a panegy-ric and a biographical work such as the Historia Augusta. Although both genres deal with describing the life of a person of import, a biographer sets out to do this with a certain degree of objectivity. A panegyric is noth-ing more than a song of praise for its subject.21 That is not to say that a biography cannot include praise for its subject, but its supposed intent is to simply describe the events that coloured its subject’s life. Whether the author of the Historia Augusta limited himself to this aim will be discussed in the next chapter.

The third and final source that this paper will focus on is Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations. This source is especially interesting to observe, since it is actually written by one of the five good emperors himself. Despite this, Gibbon does not reference this work as a source very often. This can be used both as an argument in favour of Gibbon’s supposed impartiality as well as an argument against it. This will be discussed in more detail later on. The Meditations is written in Greek, not Latin, which is remarkable given that the writer was a Roman emperor. Greek was considered the language of philosophy, however, and Marcus Aure-lius received a bilingual education.22 Gibbon is known to have received lessons in Greek during his time at Magdalen College in Oxford.23 Anoth-er important feature of Marcus Aurelius’ work is that it seems to never have been intended for publishing, rather a personal notebook in which the emperor gives himself advice. He bases this advice on stoic philoso-phy that he more than likely received education in. 24 It is therefore not so much a testament of his work as an emperor, which could be part of the reason why Gibbon does not reference it very often, but rather a summa-ry of his personal views and thoughts.

20 B. Radice, ‘Pliny and the ‘Panegyricus’’, Greece & Rome 15:2 (1968) 166-172, there 167.21 D. Burgersdijk, ‘Pliny’s Panegyricus and the Historia Augusta’, 290.22 A. Giavatto, ‘The Style of the Meditations’ in: M. van Ackeren (ed.), A Companion to Marcus Aurelius (Oxford-New York 2012), 333-345, there 333. 23 L. Damrosch, The Club, 325. Damrosch also mentions that Gibbon did not enjoy his time at Magdalen College, however, so perhaps one could speculate that this was also part of the reason he did not use the Meditations very often as a source. But this does not seem likely, given the fact that he uses other sources written in Greek quite frequently, as will be mentioned in the next paragraph.24 C. Gill, ‘Marcus Aurelius’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies. Supplement 94:1 (2007) 175-187, there 175.

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Having established the sources for this study, a short overview of the additional sources used by Gibbon will be provided. Even though Gibbon used writings from most of the famous Roman historians, not all of them wrote about the period of the five good emperors. Examples include Zosimus, Polybius, and Appian of Alexandria. A few that were will be specifically mentioned here. A source often mentioned by is the work of Cassius.25 He wrote a massive work called Roman History, which comprised a staggering eighty books written in Greek.26 Considering the scope of that work, it will not be evaluated more closely in this paper. It would, however, make fine research material on its own for research that aims to unpack Gibbon’s biases. The same can be said for Tacitus’ Annales and Historiae, which are also often referenced by Gibbon for the same period. Tacitus was a member of the Roman elite (like most if not all authors that will be mentioned in this paper) and saw a lot of emperors come and go in Rome. Whereas Cassius Dio wrote about the period of the five good emperors looking back (having lived through part of the reign of Antoninus Pius and all of Marcus Aurelius’), Tacitus lived through the starting years of this period and died during Hadrian’s reign. This means Tacitus also lived through the tumultuous period that preceded it and could therefore compare the difference between stability and tumult. This is also something he shares with Pliny the Younger, which is part of the reason only one of these authors will be looked at more closely in this paper, in order to increase the diversity of the source material. Gibbon’s extensive use of both Cassius Dio’s and Tacitus’ works seems to make sense, since they have both lived through different parts of the designat-ed period. Tacitus even played a role in the political arena of that time, having worked his way through the cursus honorum and being an active participant in the processes that Gibbon describes.27

For the last part of this chapter, sources that Gibbon did not use will be considered. The first thing that a reader flipping through the pages of The Decline and Fall might notice is Gibbon’s reliance on literary sourc-es. Since Gibbon was diligent in his annotations it is clear to see where he got his information from. However, despite his extensive use of liter-ary sources, Gibbon largely ignored numismatic, artistic and archaeo-logical sources for as far as they were available to him. It is also impor-tant to note that the importance of archaeological source material only

25 Gibbon refers to Cassius Dio as ‘Dion Cassius’.26 T.D. Barnes, ‘The Composition of Cassius Dio’s “Roman History”’, Phoenix 38:3 (1984) 240-255, there 251.27 M.A. Fitzsimons, ‘The Mind of Tacitus’, 474.

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became fully appreciated by historians in the twentieth century (with Michael Rostovtzeff as pioneer).28 The fact that Gibbon got his inspira-tion for writing his work from his visit to Rome makes the lack of non-literary sources all the more peculiar, since he would have seen (at least part of) the important visual aspect of the ancient Roman society with his own eyes. Gibbon’s heavy reliance on literary sources was by no means an exception in the time that he lived. Moreover, collections of Roman sources would not have been categorized centrally, yet and even if they were, Gibbon would have had to physically attend the place in which they were gathered, which would have been a difficult task in the eigh-teenth century. Gibbon was fortunate enough to be born into the upper classes and had a personal library filled with literature he could base his work on.29 It seems likely that he would have relied mostly on the sourc-es he had at hand. His library was surprisingly rich, given the fact that he used so many different literary sources, at least from the most famous of Roman historians. Therefore, in his literary sources there are no obvi-ous works missing.

Are the sources Gibbon used propagandistic?

In this part of the paper, the three sources mentioned in the last chapter (the Historia Augusta, Pliny the Younger’s Panegyricus Traiani, and Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations) will be looked at more closely in order to estab-lish whether they were made with propagandistic intentions. In order to do this properly, a definition of the word ‘propaganda’ needs to be established. To this end, the Cambridge Dictionary has been consulted. The definition given there is as follows: ‘information, ideas, opinions, or images, often only giving one part of an argument, that are broadcast, published, or in some other way spread with the intention of influencing people’s opinions.’30 The three sources will thus be judged according to the criteria in this definition.

The first source to be evaluated is the Historia Augusta. This is a diffi-cult task, since the author of the work is unknown, as well as their inten-tions. As previously mentioned, Hermann Dessau proposed the theo-ry (which is now widely accepted) that the Historia Augusta was writ-ten by just one person at the end of the fourth century. Since it starts

28 P. Cartledge, ‘The Enlightened Historiography of Edward Gibbon, Esq.: A Bicen-tennial Celebration’, The Maynooth Review / Revieú Mhá Nuad 3:2 (1977) 67-93, there 93; M.I. Finley, ‘Archaeology and History’, Daedalus 100:1 (1971) 168-186, there 168, 176.29 L. Damrosch, The Club, 328; E. Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life and Writings, 155. 30 Cambridge Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/propa-ganda (visited June 7th 2021).

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with describing the life of Hadrian (r. 117-138), the temporal distance would be around two hundred and fifty years. This makes it impossible for the author to have lived during Hadrian’s reign, as well as the other two emperors written about in the Historia Augusta that are relevant for this paper (Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius). Therefore, the author will have had to do research himself into the time that these emperors reigned. Continuing the work of Dessau, Ronald Syme believed that the author of the Historia Augusta largely based his biographies of the emper-ors who reigned before Caracalla on those of another biographer, dubbed Ignotus by Syme.31 While Ignotus is not specifically mentioned in the Historia Augusta as a provider of source material, Marius Maximus is. The author of the Historia Augusta would fill in the gaps in Ignotus’ work with Marius Maximus’ material, according to Timothy David Barnes.32 When the author of the Historia Augusta makes mention of Marius Maxi-mus, it is usually to insert a fact about the emperor’s life that is not posi-tive. An example of this is in the biography of Hadrian: ‘Also a blind old man from Pannonia came to Hadrian when he was ill with fever, and touched him; whereupon the man received his sight, and the fever left Hadrian. All these things, however, Marius Maximus declares were done as a hoax.’33 This indicates that Marius Maximus was not keen on these emperors. However, the Historia Augusta as a source must be evaluated and not Marius Maximus. It is clear that the author of this work at least tried to show that different perspectives of a certain event existed. This seems to indicate that he did not aim to influence people’s opinions or showed only one part of an argument (two criteria that the Cambridge Dictionary’s definition for propaganda proposes). Although it cannot be established with certainty, for the purposes of this paper, the Historia Augusta will for this reason not be considered propaganda. This does not mean that all the information this work contains is regarded as truth-ful, but rather that its author did not mean to deceive or manipulate its intended audience as per the definition by the Cambridge Dictionary.

Secondly, Pliny the Younger’s Panegyricus Traiani will be looked at more closely. It seems pretty straightforward to classify this work as propaganda based on the information provided about it in the previous chapter. Indeed, a panegyric’s intent is specifically to praise an emper-or and therefore, a completely biased work meant to convey the great-ness of the designated emperor. An example of this is provided by Betty

31 M. Kulikowski, ‘Marius Maximus in Ammianus and the Historia Augusta’, The Classical Quarterly New Series 57:1 (2007) 244-256, there 245.32 M. Kulikowski, ‘Marius Maximus’, 245; 248-249; T.D. Barnes, The Sources of the Historia Augusta (Brussels 1978) 98-107. 33 D. Magie, Historia Augusta, Volume I (Cambridge 1921) 77.

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Radice. In her work ‘Pliny and the ‘Panegyricus’’ she shows how Pliny’s work contains ‘skilful propaganda’; Pliny writes, after all, that if Trajan will continue his reign the way he started it, he would be a model for his successors. Radice also remarks that the Panegyricus Traiani ‘is much too long, and some of its topics are laboured to the point of obscurity or hidden behind a facade of elaborate rhetoric.’34 This rhetoric will with-out a doubt have served the purpose of influencing its audience’s opin-ions. Indeed, Trajan was a popular emperor, even in his own time. Not in the last place because of famous monuments in celebration of mili-tary successes, but Pliny’s Panegyricus Traiani might have played a big role in this, as well.35 This is exactly what the work was supposed to do if it was written with propagandistic intentions. Therefore, this source will certainly be regarded as propaganda for the purposes of this paper.

For the third and last source to be evaluated, the Meditations, the question should first be: was this work ever meant for publication? After all, if it was not, it would also not have been intended to change people’s opinions in a certain way. Considering not many people even knew the work existed until Byzantine times, it does not seem likely.36 The work also seems too disorganized and personal to assume it was ever meant for publication.37 However, perhaps Marcus Aurelius intended the Medi-tations to be a sort of handbook for himself or successive emperors as a reminder of how to control the public through his reign. In that way, it could be considered a propagandistic work. But this theory also seems unlikely, since the legislative changes in Rome that are attributed to Marcus Aurelius’ reign do not necessarily support a stoic philosophy.38 Stoicism was, after all, the philosophy that Marcus Aurelius adhered to and that shines through in the Meditations quite clearly.39 Based on this and the other evidence put forward in this paragraph, Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations will not be considered a propagandistic source.

34 B. Radice, ‘Pliny and the ‘Panegyricus’’, 168-169. 35 D. Burgersdijk, ‘Pliny’s Panegyricus and the Historia Augusta’, 290.36 P.A. Brunt, ‘Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations’, The Journal of Roman Studies 64 (1974) 1-20, there 1. 37 P.A. Brunt, ‘Marcus Aurelius’, 2. 38 G.R. Stanton, ‘Marcus Aurelius, Emperor and Philosopher’, Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 18:5 (1969) 570-587, there 575. Stanton eloquently and elaborately lays out the counter-arguments to this theory in response to Pol Noyen’s claim that Marcus Aure-lius was the greatest ever practitioner of stoicism. Stanton alludes that, because Marcus Aurelius’ legislations did nothing particular to support a stoic philosophy under his peop-le and his legislations did not differ much from those of his predecessors (who were not stoic), he was not the greatest stoic to have ever lived. 39 C. Gill, ‘Marcus Aurelius’, 175.

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Concluding, one of the three selected sources can be regarded as propaganda beyond any reasonable doubt (Pliny’s Panegyricus Traiani). Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, on the other hand, easily does not fall with-in this categorisation. The Historia Augusta is the most difficult source of the three to establish this for. In and of itself, the author probably did not mean to deceive its audience, but the sources it relied on might have. Therefore, the Historia Augusta may have had a propagandistic effect, without it being intended as such. How Gibbon tackles this problem will be the subject of the next chapter.

How did Gibbon interpret these sources?

In order to establish whether Gibbon had a tainted image of the past because of propagandistic source material, the way he used his sources needs to be evaluated first. Much like in the last two chapters, this will be done by looking at the sources one by one, before coming to some gener-al conclusions.

First, the Historia Augusta. In total, Gibbon refers to this work a stag-gering two hundred and seventy-three times in his footnotes. Fortu-nately, many of these references do not relate to the five good emperors. Still, the amount of relevant references is too large to evaluate them all in this paper (twenty-three). Therefore, only some references to the Histo-ria Augusta that could give an insight into how Gibbon used his sourc-es will be considered. The first of these is in part two of chapter one: ‘If all our historians were lost, medals, inscriptions, and other monuments, would be sufficient to record the travels of Hadrian.’40 This indicates that Gibbon indeed was aware of (at least some) archaeological sources that could be useful for his research. However, he does not make mention of these sources as often as a modern-day historian would. These types of medium were often used by emperors to convey a certain image of them-selves to the public. It seems, then, that Gibbon did not put much value into these sources for the purpose of history writing. Another interesting mention of Hadrian based on the Historia Augusta can be found on page 97: ‘Hadrian afterwards made a very equitable regulation, which divided all treasure-trove between the right of property and that of discovery’.41 Gibbon portrays Hadrian’s action here as a fair one. The passage in the Historia Augusta Gibbon refers to, states: ‘Of the crown-money for his triumph he remitted Italy’s contribution, and lessened that of the prov-inces, all the while setting forth grandiloquently and in great detail the

40 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Chapter I, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visited January 24th 2022).41 Ibidem, Chapter II.

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straits of the public treasury.’42 This passage does not make mention of Gibbon’s statement that it was an ‘equitable regulation,’ so this seems to be an opinion Gibbon himself inferred from the source. There are undoubtedly more relevant passages to be found in both Gibbon’s work and the Historia Augusta itself, but, for the purposes of this paper, these will do.

The next source to evaluate more closely is Pliny the Younger’s Pane-gyricus Traiani. Gibbon must have been aware of the scant number of sources on the emperor Trajan and was also probably aware of the propa-gandistic nature of a panegyric. As James D. Garrison skilfully deducted, when Gibbon needs to rely on a panegyric for information, he ‘isolates those assertions that tend to minimize the accomplishments of the figure celebrated.’43 This indicates Gibbon knew that the panegyrics were full of potentially undeserved flattery and that, in order to discover the truth, the rare passages where the panegyrics were not unambiguously praise-ful had to be emphasized. Garrison also remarks how Gibbon sees the literary genre of panegyrics as a sign of the decline of the Roman civili-zation, ‘corrupting the language of politics’.44 This indicates that Gibbon did not simply incorporate information that he found in his sources into his own work, but that his views on the decline were also grounded in his personal views on what a great civilization should look like. The Decline and Fall contains four references to Pliny’s Panegyricus Traiani. The first is on pages 40 and 41, where Gibbon simply remarks how Trajan would sometimes ‘condescended’ himself to personally assess and train with soldiers.45 The second merely mentions how Trajan revived the ancient oath and that he swore to abide by the laws.46 The third mention is regard-ing Augustus and thus not relevant for this paper. The fourth is like-ly the most interesting: ‘The emperor Trajan allowed, and even encour-aged, the rich senators to purchase those magnificent and useless places (…).’47 This passage seems to convey some frustration from Gibbon about Trajan’s policies, which, in turn, shines through that Gibbon had a clear image in mind of what an emperor should do and how he should behave.

42 D. Magie, Historia Augusta, Volume I, 21.43 J.D. Garrison, ‘Gibbon and the “Treacherous Language of Panegyrics”’, Eighteenth-Century Studies 11:1 (1977) 40-62, there 42; E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Chapter XIII.44 J.D. Garrison, ‘Gibbon and the “Treacherous Language of Panegyrics”’, 48. 45 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Chapter I, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visited January 24th 2022).46 Ibidem, 127. 47 Ibidem, 277.

Ex Tempore Edward Gibbon and the Five Good Emperors 13

This last fact can also be seen when Gibbon regards Marcus Aure-lius’ Meditations. Gibbon did not reference the Meditations very often. This could mean that on the one hand, Gibbon might have been concerned that this source would be too one-sided to use for objective history writ-ing. However, it is also a great opportunity to see how emperors them-selves looked at the world and their role in it, which could have been very useful information indeed for Gibbon’s research. He does, howev-er, make a remark about the work: ‘His meditations, composed in the tumult of the camp, are still extant; and he even condescended to give lessons of philosophy, in a more public manner than was perhaps consis-tent with the modesty of sage, or the dignity of an emperor.’48 Just like with Trajan, Gibbon seems to be frustrated with the way in which the emperor behaved, portraying certain characteristics that a perfect emper-or would not.

Conclusion

All that is left now is to answer the question of whether Gibbon relied too much on propagandistic sources. First of all, Gibbon relied most-ly on literary sources. The fact that he did not use many archaeological sources could mean that he was less influenced by propaganda, since coins, statues and buildings were often used as tools to convey a certain image about an emperor, even though this has resulted in less thorough research. Furthermore, Gibbon seems to be very much aware of the bias-es in his sources. But the previous chapter has shown several times how Gibbon let his own views on how Roman society and politics should have conducted themselves get in the way of objectivity. His determination, therefore, to show that the Roman decline could have been avoided and that the ideal society based on civic humanism was near, seems to have been a bigger hurdle in the road towards objectivity than the propagan-distic source material. This supports the claim made in the introduction of this paper only partially; on the one hand, Gibbon was indeed eager to show that the Machiavellian civic-humanist state was attainable. Howev-er, Gibbon does not seem to have been particularly influenced by the propagandistic nature of some of his sources. Rather, he used them to piece together what he believed happened, so as to confirm his theories about the reasons for the decline of the Roman Empire. This is consis-tent with the passage referred to in the first chapter of this paper: ‘in this way, he hoped to find defining moments (or ‘nice and secret springs of

48 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume I, Chap-ter III, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visited January 24th 2022).

Ex Tempore Van Dijk14

actions’) which shaped and controlled society.’49 When he found these springs of actions, Gibbon seems to have used them to convey to the read-er not just what was, but also what should have been.

Further research will no doubt be able to elaborate on this paper. Firstly, many more sources can be looked at more closely in order to establish Gibbon’s influences. It is possible that, with the limited number of sources that have been looked at closely for this paper, an unrepresen-tative image of Gibbon’s work has been obtained. Secondly, considering the scope of Gibbon’s work and the massive timespan it covers, another method could be to apply the same methods on a different age that The Decline and Fall contains. For a third suggestion, some sources, like the Historia Augusta, can be looked at in more detail in relation to Gibbon’s work, although some historians have already done that. The vastness of both of these works, however, makes for a nearly endless amount of possibilities for future research.

49 E. Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume III, Chap-ter XXVII, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/25717/25717-h/25717-h.htm (visited January 24th 2022).