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 48 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 48 takes up plan of the last two volumes—Succession and characters of the Greek emperors of Constantinople, from the time of Heraclius to the Latin Conquest. The footnotes are not in this reading; what you have is the narrative.