What prevented civilization from dissapearing at the end fo the ancient world?
Answer First of all, the “end of the ancient world” is just an arbitrary point on a time line. The customary date is 476, the terminal date of the reign of Romulus Augustulus. But by this time Rome had been sacked by Germans twice, and Germans had already reached nearly every quarter of the Western Empire. And in the Eastern Empire, which was larger, richer, and more populous, it was business as usual (i.e., slow, intermittent decline) for another thousand years. So there was not much remarkable about the year 476. The Roman Senate continued to function. The papacy continued to function. And successive German rulers of Italy weren’t, as a rule, much worse than the later emperors had been. Theoderic, on the contrary, was a good deal better. The Germans weren’t against civilization. They had centuries-long association with it. They were just determined that the civilized world should transfer a good part of its wealth to them. The process was destructive, but the end wasn’t destruction;
