The first thematic section, “Escapism,” does not give a sense of my book’s structure and contents. The core parts of the book (Parts IV and V, which make up 54% of the main text) fail to receive even a single sentence that might explain what they are about. Only Part II, on the factors that sustained Rome’s expansion, and the short epilogue at the end of the book attract any attention. Instead, H. criticizes my alleged lack of caution in employing demographic information. This impression, however, derives from a striking misreading of a single graph (Fig. E.1 on my p. 525), which – as a whole series of equivalent graphs in Part I also do – refers to the proportion of the population of Europe that was claimed by the most populous polity at a given point in time and not, as H. avers, to “’actual’ population peaks in the later 6th c. to 9th c.” (411).

中文翻译：

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为大历史辩护：对理查德·霍奇斯的回复

第一个主题部分“逃避现实”并没有让人了解我的书的结构和内容。本书的核心部分（第四部分和第五部分，占正文的 54%）甚至没有一个可以解释它们内容的句子。只有第二部分，关于维持罗马扩张的因素，以及书末的简短尾声引起了人们的注意。相反，H. 批评我在使用人口统计信息时缺乏谨慎。然而，这种印象源于对单个图表的惊人误读（我的第 525 页上的图 E.1），该图表——作为第一部分中的一系列等效图表也是如此——指的是人口的比例欧洲在特定时间点被人口最多的政体宣称拥有，而不是像 H. avers 那样，“实际”人口在 6 世纪后期达到顶峰。到 9 世纪。” （411）。