Perhaps more than the cavalry of the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Huns, the archers of the Avars, the Sassanid Persians, and the pre-Ottoman nomadic Turkic tribes of the East and the Balkans (from the Onogurs to the Patzinaks/Petchenegs, the Uzes, and the Cumans/Polohtses/Kipsaks), from the large settlements of the semi-nomadic Slavs, from the destructive fleets of the Vandals and the "Saracen" Arabs, from the raiding campaigns of the Bulgarians, from the axes of the Scandinavians, from the siege engines of the Normans and the various Crusaders before and after 1204, from the declarations of the Catalans and the large settlements of the Albanians, and even from the destructive cannons of the Ottomans, Byzantium and its posthumous reputation in world history were threatened by the relentless pen of the great English historian of the Enlightenment and Rationalism era, Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), who in the second half of the 18th century indeed inflicted decisive blows upon them.

It constitutes the precursor epitome of the famous later phrase "...the pen is mightier than the sword..." of the 19th-century English writer Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), in his five-act theatrical play Richelieu; or the Conspiracy (London, 1839). For this reason, many rushed — especially from the second part of the 19th century — and others still rush today to refute and deconstruct Gibbon's work.

However, no matter how harshly many Byzantinologists judge the latter over the course of time, he remains a monument of solid knowledge of the (up to then published) primary sources, of brilliant conception, and exemplary historiographical writing.