Still relevant. The font of late Roman and medieval history : Historians love revision. Its why so few histories of the 19th century endure; new evidence and interpretations render them useless. <p> Why, then, is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire timeless? The author wasnt a post-modernist man trapped in an Enlightenment body; Gibbon had no conception of social history or archeology, his 18th century idea that climate affects morality is long out of date, and his analyses of the...