Edward Gibbon Quote

The division of the Roman world between the sons of Theodosius marks the final establishment of the empire of the East, which, from the reign of Arcadius to the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, subsisted one thousand and fifty-eight years in a state of premature and perpetual decay.

An Abridgment of Mr. Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (ed. 1807)