THE UNION of the Roman empire was dissolved; its genius was humbled in
the dust; and armies of unknown barbarians, issuing from the frozen regions
of the North, had established their victorious reign over the fairest provinces
of Europe and Africa.
Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman EmpireIT MAY very well happen that what seems for one group a period of decline
may seem to another the birth of a new advance.
Edward Hallett Carr, What is History?