The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is the historical work by Edward Gibbon, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. A continuous narrative from the 2nd century AD to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, it is distinguished by its rigorous scholarship, historical perspective, and its incomparable literary style.

The work is divided into two parts, equal in bulk but different in treatment. The first half covers about 300 years to the end of the empire in the West, about 480 AD; in the second half nearly 1,000 years are compressed. Gibbon viewed the Roman Empire as a single entity in undeviating decline from the ideals of political and intellectual freedom that had characterised the classical literature he had read. For him, the material decay of Rome was the effect and symbol of moral decadence.