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 40 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 40: Elevation of Justin the Elder—Reign of Justinian—I. The Empress Theodora—II. Factions of the circus, and sedition of Constantinople—III. Trade and manufacture of silk—IV. Finances and taxes—V. Edifices of Justinian—Church of St. Sophia—Fortifications and frontiers of the Eastern Empire—Abolition of the schools of Athens, and the consulship of Rome. The footnotes — Gibbon’s famous asides — are not in this reading. What you have is the narrative, in his own eighteenth-century English.