La décadence romaine selon Richepin

In 1898, Jean Richepin published Contes de la décadence romaine, a work devoted to the humble histories of a bygone age, but one spiritually close nonetheless to fin-de-siècle readers. The author distances himself progressively from the objectivity of the historian in order to indulge in his own aesthetic leanings and provide us, as Jean de Palacio affirms, not with a history of decadent Rome but with a “truly decadent rewriting of the history of Rome”.