Edward Gibbon, an English historian, published The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in six volumes between 1776 and 1788. This is Chapter 25 of that work. He follows Rome from the prosperous age of Trajan and the Antonines, around the year 100, through the fall of the West and on to the Ottoman capture of Constantinople in 1453.

Chapter 25: The government and death of Jovian—Election of Valentinian, who associates his brother Valens, and makes the final division of the Eastern and Western empires—Revolt of Procopius—Civil and ecclesiastical administration—Germany—Britain—Africa—The East—The Danube—Death of Valentinian—His two sons, Gratian and Valentinian II, succeed to the Western Empire. The footnotes — Gibbon’s famous asides — are not in this reading. What you have is the narrative, in his own eighteenth-century English.