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 5 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 5 takes up public sale of the empire to Didius Julianus by the Praetorian Guards—Clodius Albinus in Britain, Pescennius Niger in Syria, and Septimius Severus in Pannonia, declare against the murderers of Pertinax—Civil wars and victory of Severus over his three rivals—Relaxation of discipline—New maxims of government. The footnotes are not in this reading; what you have is the narrative.