Note 3-4 — Chapter III

Gibbon's fifty-sixth chapter begins with a sentence which may be taken as the epitome of the entire history we have to investigate: "The three great nations of the world, the Greeks, the Saracens, and the Franks, encountered each other on the theatre of Italy." I use the more general word, Goths, instead of Franks; and the more accurate word, Arab, for Saracen; but otherwise, the reader will observe that the division is the same as mine. Gibbon does not recognize the Roman people as a nation—but only the Roman power as an empire.