Edward Gibbon

1737–1794 · English historian · author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Edward Gibbon was an English historian and Member of Parliament whose six-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1789) is a landmark of Enlightenment scholarship, famous for its irony and its skeptical treatment of religion. The often-misattributed “true / false / useful” epigram is his own summary of Roman religious pluralism in Chapter II, not a translation of any ancient author.

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“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful”

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