Gib·bon  (gĭb'ən)  British historian who wrote the classic text The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-1788). |
An eighteenth-century British historian whose masterpiece The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was conceived during a tour of Italy while, as Gibbon put it, he “sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol.” Although largely superseded by later scholarship, his work remains a classic of English historical literature.