He didn't put THAT in his footnotes, eh?

"If man were called to fix the period of 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."

Since it sheds some light on the attitude of Gibbon’s contemporaries on the Byzantine Empire, when they thought about it at all, it is worth pointing out that his famous sentence about the happiness of the Antonine Period, which I have just quoted, is not entirely original.

Gibbon’s contemporary in Scotland, William Robertson had put together a similar sentence. Robertson was, like Gibbon, an industrious scholar and at the same time, a popular author who made money from writing history. His History of Scotland went into 14 editions before his death, and his History of the Reign of the Emperor Charles V, published in 1769, had earned him 4,500 pounds as well as a snuff-box given him by Catherine the Great of Russia. The model for Gibbon’s famous sentence appears in his review of the state of Europe with which he prefaces his History of Charles V.

It reads, "If a man were called to fix upon the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most calamitous and affected, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Theodosius the Great to the establishment of the Lombards in Italy."

I like the original better too.