Arthur and the Fall of Rome
Wednesday, March 29th, 2006
by Vincent Bridges
Part One - The Fall of Rome
By the late fourth and early fifth centuries of our Common Era, the Roman Empire in the west was collapsing under the weight of its own decadence. Every historian has their own opinion about what happened to bring about this “decline and fall” of the great empire, but however it happened, by the turn of the fifth century Rome was no longer the Imperial City. Constantinople reigned as the capital of the eastern portion of the Empire, and most western Emperors preferred Milan or Ravenna to the slums and pestilence of the Eternal City.
To her official poets, Rome remained very much the city “whose beauty no imagination can picture, whose praise no voice can sound, who raises a golden head under the neighboring stars, and with her seven hills imitates the seven regions of heaven; mother of arms and law, who extends her sway over all the earth, and was the earliest cradle of justice: this is the city which, sprung from humble beginnings, has stretched to either pole, from one small place extended its power so as to be coterminous with the light of the sun.”
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