Tom Holland on the fall of Rome The greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene, in the history of mankind. So Edward Gibbon described The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - theme and title alike of the most splendidly written work of history in the English language (1776-1789). The rolling cadences of its prose, the delicate venom of its irony, and the stupefying sweep of its parabola make for one of the supreme epics in literature. Those who want a more contemporary narrative should turn to Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire (2006), which shines a powerful searchlight upon the entire shadow-dimmed panorama of the empire's end in the West. It is complemented by Bryan Ward-Perkins's splendidly titled The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (2005), which leavens a sobering portrait of a Europe thrown "back to a standard of living typical of prehistoric times" with verve and wit. Ward-Perkins's book is, to a degree, a riposte to a perspective on the Roman world which sees it not so much expiring as evolving. The seminal exemplar of this take is Peter Brown's The World of Late Antiquity (1971), a book as elegant and concise as it has been massive in its influence. Finally, for those who wonder how it felt to stand in the shadow of the empire's disintegration, Giusto Traina's 428AD (English translation, 2009) is a brilliant portrait of the entire Roman world as it stood in a single, ordinary year.