I mean it really is. I like to correct people and say the Roman Empire didn't so much as "collapse" as change. Central "Roman" utility receded from the periphery and eventually the Italian core itself. What was once the "Roman Empire" in Western Europe didn't collapse or vanish to be replaced by a new order, but rather ceased to be what it had once been and became something fundamentally different.
This is why I always get into arguments with Roman-weeabos who claim that the Roman empire lasted for a thousand years or w/e. I pretty much consider the split into four empires the end, but by the time Justinian comes around it's functionally so different from the Italian based empire, hardly seems like continuity.
I mean it really is. I like to correct people and say the Roman Empire didn't so much as "collapse" as change. Central "Roman" utility receded from the periphery and eventually the Italian core itself. What was once the "Roman Empire" in Western Europe didn't collapse or vanish to be replaced by a new order, but rather ceased to be what it had once been and became something fundamentally different.
Real dialectics hours up in here
This is why I always get into arguments with Roman-weeabos who claim that the Roman empire lasted for a thousand years or w/e. I pretty much consider the split into four empires the end, but by the time Justinian comes around it's functionally so different from the Italian based empire, hardly seems like continuity.
No empire collapses twice, for it is not the same empire, and it is not the same collapse
Cuncta fluunt, one might say.