This second volume of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon is the history of Roman Empire from the end of the golden age to the fall of Byzantium. Though considerable strides in historical understanding have been made since the 1700s, and the work is no longer widely reflective of modern understanding, it is still considered to be an extraordinary literary achievement due to Gibbon's great strides in methodology and the undertaking of such a daunting task with so few comprehensive sources