As soon as they put pen to paper, some writers know that they need to explain themselves. The intrepid author who publishes a biography of Dr. Samuel Johnson, e.g., has to tell us why Boswell’s Life doesn’t seem to suffice.

Who, then, can blame Adrian Goldsworthy for paying homage to Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire on the very first page of his How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower? Gibbon not only covered the subject in depth (abridged versions of his classic run to more than 600 pages) but he did so in that magisterial and lapidary prose that seems synonymous with 18th-century England.

Goldsworthy wisely begins by laying laurels at Gibbon’s feet, and then justifies his endeavor by arguing that “each successive generation has returned to the mystery of why Rome fell,” and that “the preoccupations of each age have usually been reflected in their views. . . .” Our age, he writes, is obsessed with the notion that the United States is the new Rome, and that “criticizing Rome has become a way of criticizing American policy and culture.” This comparison, he claims, does a disservice to both nations, blurring crucial distinctions.

It isn’t until after he puts to rest both the ghost of Gibbon and the idea that Roman history is really U.S. history that Goldsworthy begins to tell his story in earnest. Although he does have a few overarching theories as to why the Roman Empire split in two and then disintegrated in the West, his primary concern — and the book’s real virtue — has to do with its dogged adherence to facts, and to separating those facts from mythology, speculation, and ossified tradition. He turns to archaeological and scientific analyses at the drop of a tunic, always insisting on drawing a firm boundary between what’s really known and what isn’t.

Goldsworthy’s study will never supplant Gibbon’s — none could — but it is a workmanlike and entertaining march through the years, punctuated by corrections, updates, and hugely informative sections on military, economic, and sociological issues. He appends a useful glossary and timeline, and although the footnotes are legion (pun intended), his book is clearly aimed at the general reader, who will learn a great deal having to do with all aspects of later Roman history.

Gibbon had an axe to grind: for him Rome’s fall was a cautionary tale hinging upon the Empire’s moral decline. Goldsworthy’s axe is aimed at revisionist historians who see a “transformation” in Rome rather than a “fall,” which Goldsworthy calls “a rosy portrait” that “makes no sense whatsoever in the light of the evidence, let alone sheer common sense.”

Perhaps the most important thread that Goldsworthy weaves into his discussion is his interpretation of Rome’s fall as a result of its own weaknesses, rather than of the power of the surrounding nations, from Goths to Persians. And this his terrific book makes abundantly clear, both in its litany of usurpations and murders (“only a handful of third-century emperors died a natural death”), and in its meticulous account of the internecine struggles and take-no-prisoners approach to politics.

antjlewis@yahoo.com