I have no doubts that this was the sentence originally meant and probably written by Gibbon, and have felt no scruple in extirpating the inveterate error from the text.[1]
Gibbon's debt to Tillemont Gibbon's diligent accuracy in the use of his materials cannot be over-praised, and it will not be diminished by giving the due credit to his French predecessor Tillemont. The Histoire des Empereurs and the Mémoires ecclésiastiques, laborious and exhaustive collections of material, were addressed to the special student and not to the general reader, but scholars may still consult them with profit. It is interesting to find Mommsen in his later years retracting one of his earlier judgments and reverting to a conclusion of Tillemont. In his recent edition[2] of the Laterculus of Polemius Silvius, he writes thus:—
"L'auteur de la Notice—peritissimi Tillemontii verba sunt (hist. 5, 699)—vivoit en Occident et ne savoit pas trop l'état où estoit l'Orient; ei iuvenis contradixi hodie subscribo".
It is one of Gibbon's merits that he made full use of Tillemont, "whose inimitable accuracy almost assumes the character of genius," as far as Tillemont guided him, up to the reign of Anastasius I.; and it is only just to the mighty work of the Frenchman to impute to him a large share in the accuracy which the Englishman achieved. From the historical, though not from the literary, point of
- ↑ In some other cases I have corrected the text in this volume, (I). p. 55, n. 109; Sumelpur for Jumelpur, see Appendix 9. (2). p. 259, I. 2 from top; the reading of the received text "public" is surely a printer's error, which escaped detection, for "republic," which I have ventured to restore. (3). p. 279, I. 5 from foot, I have assumed an instance of "lipography". (4). p. 328, n. 35, "Lycius" had been already corrected (see Smith's ed.) to "Lydius". Probably Gibbon had his Zosimus open before him when he wrote this note, and his pen traced Lycius because Lycia happened to occur in the very next line of his authority. I have followed Sir William Smith's precedent in dealing freely with the punctuation, and in modernizing the spelling of a few words.
- ↑ In the Chronica Minora (M. G. H.), vol. i., 512 sqq. See p. 533.
