[muawiyah]

Quite civilized Germans living within the Roman Empire attempted mightily to resucitate the place. Even such reputed barbarians as Alaric came from inside the Empire as did the followers who ended up stranded in North Africa. (See Visigoths).

You have to keep separate in your mind the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the Fall of Rome (in the West) and the Dark Ages. They each had an impact on all or part of the Empire, but each had it's own impetus.

Barbara Tuchman (the famous historian) noted that the mere fact something was reported amplifies its apparant importance a thousand times. People often overlook this phenomenon and incorrectly assume that the Roman Empire fell to barbarians sometime during the Dark Ages since Rome, barbarians and Dark Ages were reported. Actually Rome did not fall until the 1400s when the city of Byzantium and it's environs were seized by the Turks (who were, by that time, quite civilized themselves, or things would have been much, much worse).

[ZULU]

I agree with you. Theodoric wanted to resuscitate the Roman Empire. The fact that his people were Arian Christians and the native Italians were Orthodox western Christians frustrated his efforts, as did the machinations of Justinian which destroyed his successor.

The "Dark Ages" were dark realtive to the depth of our knowledge of them. The Goths, etc, were frequently highly Romanized by that time as the Romans had become Germanicized. What many scholars think really created the collapse of western civilization was the eruption of Isalm and the closing of sea routes between western Europe and Byzantium by Islamic expansion into Iberia, Sicily, southern Italy and the Mediterranean area.

Most of the barbarian invaders were seeking incorporation into the empire, not the destruction of the empire. Charlemagne himself had himself crowned a Roman Emperor.

As for the civlization of the Turks, I suggest you read about the sack of Constantinople. Murder, rape, desecration of religious places and mass enslavement of the population was the outcome.

[Cronos]

Quite civilized Germans living within the Roman Empire attempted mightily to resucitate the place

That was in the years 400 AD. The Germans who entered imperial lands became civilised

[VadeRetro]

Actually Rome did not fall until the 1400s when the city of Byzantium and it's environs were seized by the Turks (who were, by that time, quite civilized themselves, or things would have been much, much worse).

The Constantinople that fell to the Turks in 1453 had indeed been the capital of Constantine, but it had already fallen once in the Fourth Crusade. There was no Byzantine ("Roman") Empire for almost 60 years, 1204 to 1261, the duration of something called the Latin Kingdom of Constantinople. Continuity was lost there. 1204 should probably be marked as the disappearance of the last remaining real shreds of the Roman Empire.

Yes, that nation still in 1453 called itself the Roman Empire. Nevertheless it was a small, uniformly Greek-speaking kingdom, no empire at all. It had lost the last shreds of empire centuries earlier. Nor was it the last kingdom to style itself the Roman Empire. Attempted revivals include the Holy Roman Empire and Napoleon crowning himself as Roman Emperor as late as 1800.