Context:

Explicitly mentioned at the start of the episode as 'his great book' that Gibbon completed on June 27, 1787, taking 20 years to write about the fall of Rome.

Context:

Referenced when discussing how Greeks understood that empires rise and fall: 'Herodotus, the very first historian, in the opening of his book, he says that, you know, powers that were great are now small and vice versa.'

Context:

Referenced in discussion of prophecies about empires: 'we've talked about the book of Daniel in, I think, in the Babylon episode, didn't we? Where he sees four beasts coming out of the ocean. And he's told that these beasts are empires that will succeed one after the other.'

Context:

Referenced in discussion of Christian understanding of Rome's role in preventing the Antichrist: 'this then feeds into a kind of very distinctive understanding of Paul's second letter to the Thessalonians, where he writes about the Antichrist.'

Context:

Mentioned in connection with Christian apocalyptic expectations and Rome's role in history: 'the Book of Revelation and the sense that Christ will come again is absolutely kind of writing in people's imaginations.'