The latter portion he achieved in three volumes more, which he gave to the world on his fifty-first birthday, in 1788.
Thus the work naturally falls into two equal parts.

It will be more convenient to disregard in our remarks the interval of five years which separated the publication of the first volume from its two immediate companions.

The first three volumes constitute a whole in themselves, which we will now consider.
From the accession of Commodus, A.D.180, to the last of the Western Caesars, A.D.476, three centuries elapsed.

The first date is a real point of departure, the commencement of a new stage of decay in the empire.

The second is a mere official record of the final disappearance of a series of phantom sovereigns, whose vanishing was hardly noticed.