 The "Commentary" enjoyed its own period of popularity in the 17th and 18th centuries.An English translation by George Stanhope in 1694 ran through four editions in the early 1700s.Edward Gibbon remarked in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" that Simplicius' "Commentary" on Epictetus "is preserved in the library of nations, as a classic book" unlike the commentaries on Aristotle "which have passed away with the fashion of the times."