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Quotation from The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Selections) by Edward Gibbon
“If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors.”
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Selections), General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Milman edition, Project Gutenberg text)
The concluding sentence of Gibbon's paragraph on Christianity, in which he weighs its costs to the old military spirit against its effect on the northern peoples who entered the empire.
Citation: "If the decline of the Roman empire was hastened by the conversion of Constantine, his victorious religion broke the violence of the fall, and mollified the ferocious temper of the conquerors." — Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Selections), General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (Milman edition, Project Gutenberg text). (id gibbon-decline-and-fall-selections-q6)
Portrait: Edward Emily Gibbon, Joshua Reynolds, Public domain.
