Explanation: While the difference is sometimes exaggerated out of nostalgia for a time never lived in, it is certainly true that the decline and fall of the Roman Empire had disastrous effects on the lives of the formerly prosperous provinces which comprised it. Trade routes which were once safe from the Atlantic to the eastern Mediterranean were now treacherous, centralized authorities which punished banditry were weakened, wealthy benefactors and government officials seeking glory through the construction of infrastructure were impoverished. Life, even for the common people, became harder, and relicts of the past towered above the ramshackle buildings of the post-Roman polities. A true apocalypse!

What have the Romans ever done for us?

One is more organized and efficient, the other is more edifying for the soul.

Interestingly, when I was doing some research on the European cultural shift from Humanism to the Enlightenment, I recall some sources (forgive me, at work and not able to refer to them) suggesting that living in and around Roman ruins greatly lent itself to the Christian narrative that the people were living in a “last age of decay” just prior to the apocalypse. So technically pre-apocalypse, but more or less on the nose