What attracts you to Late Rome?

[Timianus]

Theodosius reign was heavily overrated by christian historians due to his measures against pagans. Every important pro-christian emperor was called "the Great" and so they overlooked the real great emperors.
Looking to the Battle at Frigidus, you could call Theodosius I the gravedigger of the western field army and door opener for the Visigoths.

Not to mention the murder of 20K citizens who objected to being "guarded" by foreign troops, declaring all Christians who did not adhere to the nicene creed as "heretics" and proper targets for lynch mobs, and his repeated losses to the Goths after he came out of "retirement."

The more I read about this era, while I agree that it was in "terminal decline", one cannot help see Theodosius as a autocratic madman that wasted the precious military resources of the empire, decried and punished all forms of free-thinking, and set up an unstable and unworkable administrative division of the empire upon his death. I lay much of the blame for the "accelerated" death of the empire on him.