Episode 2 of 2

Capitoline Vision

When: 15 October 1764
Where: Ruins of the Capitol, Rome
Part of: Gibbon Conceives the Idea for The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Gibbon conceived the idea for his history while sitting in the ruins of the Capitol on October 15, 1764.

Gibbon described sitting musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol while barefoot friars sang vespers in the temple of Jupiter. This moment, which he later called his "Capitoline vision," sparked the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city of Rome, which he would later expand to the entire empire.

Sources

Edward Gibbon Wikipedia

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.