No Robots

For the period generally regarded as the fall (c. 400), I recommend the following:

• Theodosius: the empire at bay (or via: amazon.co.uk) / Stephen Williams and Gerard Friell (1995).
  
• Theodosian Empresses / Kenneth G. Holum (1989).
  
• Galla Placidia Augusta / Stewart Oost (1968).

The story of Galla Placidia is, to my mind, one of the most enthralling of all antiquity.

Clivedurdle

Has anyone formally argued Ambrose didit?

Clivedurdle

Lenin's fault?

No Robots

Not to my knowledge, but Ambrose's disciple, Augustine, felt the sting of accusation sufficient to cause him to write City of God.

mountainman

I am inclined to select a date somewhat earlier than the end
of the fourth century, one that is not unrepresented in the
distribution of scattered opinion regarding this issue:

On 28 October 312 the Christians suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves victorious (2). The victory was a miracle — though opinions differed as to the nature of the sign vouchsafed to Constantine. The winners became conscious of their victory in a mood of resentment and vengeance.

A voice shrill with implacable hatred announced to the world the victory of the Milvian Bridge: Lactantius’ De mortibus persecutorum (3). In this horrible pamphlet by the author of de ira dei there is something of the violence of the prophets without the redeeming sense of tragedy that inspires Nahum’s song for the fall of Nineveh. ‘His fury is poured out like fire and the rocks are broken asunder by him. The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble’: this at least has an elementary simplicity which is very remote from the complacent and sophisticated prose of the fourth-century rhetorician.

Lactantius was not alone. More soberly, but no less ruthlessly, Eusebius recounted the divine vengeance against those who had persecuted the Church.

Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.
This essay first appeared in A. Momigliano, ed.,
The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century,
The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1963, pp. 79—99 (1)

jeffevnz

Depends on what you mean by Roman Empire. Although Constantinople fell in 1453, the Byzantine empire technically survived until 1471, when Demetrius Palaeologus sold the city of Monemvasia to the Pope; and the last Byzantine Emperor didn't die until 1503.

However, although the BE was an unbroken spinoff of the RE, it had long since ceased to be Roman in any sense. They spoke Greek, practiced Christianity, and had abandoned pretty much all Roman institutions except for the Emperor's command. They had no semblance of the Romans' former discipline and organization.

Clivedurdle

My mum was quite clear the common market was the mark of the beast so it is still here!

Seriously I am looking at the end of Paganism as the key point, so the destruction of Victory in the Senate and the failure to rebuild it under Ambrose do make sense.

A change of controlling religion is a very important marker.

And how come one set of superstitions got replaced by another, or is it more that proto-atheistic structures got replaced by superstitious ones? Is Ambrose the real start of the dark ages?

I understand Constantine as being a quite traditional emperor - not that intersted in religion - the freedom of religion stuff is an example of this. He probably unleashed the demonic superstitio of xianity unwittingly leading to the destruction of the much earlier greek based proto scientific pagan based and rational revolution.