What attracts you to Late Rome?

[starman2012]

Anyway what surprised me even more positively was Adrian Goldsworthy's take on the subject. Nothing fancy, just well based views on the inner weaknesses of the roman system like the never-solved succession of the emperors etc.

You could call it a "top-down" theory of disintegration. I think it was more "bottom up."

It is a miracle that the western empire didn't go down in the third c. AD.

IIRC Heather actually downplays the magnitude of the third century crisis. I wouldn't, though.