320 GIBBON. 



each group. Gibbon has, generally speaking, taken this 

 third line, and has pursued it with much skill and 

 felicity. But he has also adopted occasionally other 

 principles of distribution, and has collected all the events 

 relating to some important subject, as the rise or 

 downfall of a religious sect, and has given these events 

 as the general history of that subject. To this course, 

 however, there are exceptions. It was not judicious to 

 separate from the general history of Constantine an 

 event so important in its influence, both on his own 

 fortunes and on the condition of his empire, as his con- 

 version to Christianity, making it instead of Paganism 

 the established religion of the Roman world. One 

 consequence, among others, of this separation is, that the 

 historical reader can hardly recognise Constantino's 

 identity or that of his most famous victory, "the battle of 

 the standard,*" by which he took Rome and established 

 his fortune. Another consequence is, that had the 

 History ended with the first publication, comprising the 

 first sixteen chapters, the reader would have been left 

 wholly ignorant of the most important part of Constan- 

 tine's reign, although the narrative had extended over 

 two-thirds of that reign, and incomparably the most 

 material as well as the largest portion of it. It is a 

 third consequence that his religious history, being 

 reserved for a separate narrative, is blended with the 

 establishment of the Christian religion, which was only 

 fully effected during the century after his decease; and 

 thus the general narrative breaks off in the middle of 



* There is no mention whatever even of the word Ldbarum in 

 the first publication. It occurs not under the head of the battle, but 

 in the 20th chapter, which gives the religious history of the empire. 



