What attracts you to Late Rome?

[sonic]

What attracted me to the Late Empire was the question of why something so big could collapse so quickly. AD 400, everything 'normal': 476, everything 'gone'.

Things were far from "normal" by 400 CE. Without much support from its own citizens anymore, it's no wonder the West went down the tubes so fast. In fact it could've happened a lot faster. Had Alaric not been stopped by storms, Africa would've been lost almost thirty years earlier than it was. That pivotal loss, of course, accelerated the whole process.

When I first began reading about the Late Empire in the 1970s and 80s it was still common to find the claim that when Theodosius died in 395 he left behind a strong and united empire. It is only more recent work that has demonstrated that by 400 the empire was already in 'terminal decline'.