We have considered how Gibbon's style, and his handling of central issues, such as the character of Augustus and the barbarian irruptions, further the dissimulated design of the first volume of The Decline and Fall. By indirectly questioning the traditional explanations of Roman decline – that Rome fell through luxury, or that it fell because of the erosion of civic vigour following the establishment of the principate, or that it collapsed under the onslaughts of the Goths – Gibbon teases his reader about what he sees as the most important cause of the empire's decay. Addison had found the main pleasure of historiography in its creation of suspense:

Gibbon's innovation is to transfer this ‘pleasing suspence’ from narrative to argument.