What do you think?
Rate this book
302 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1971
The subtitle of this study “The Day the World Ended” is not meant to be extravagant. It was not the orbis terrarum, the globe, that ended; but the mundus, the ordered world…Both before and after the mundus, the ordered world, there is chaos. But in its bounds it was one thing. It is redundant to speak of the Roman world; the mundus was the Roman world, and there was no other.
The Roman Empire did not, at that time, become identical with the world because of any new aggrandizement of the Empire, but because of the bewildering collapse of all the surrounding nations. It must be realized that the “barbarian” invasions of the Empire were not due to the strengthening of the exterior nations, but to their sudden break-up—turning their peoples into wandering hordes. The Empire was now the world, and outside the world there was only confusion.