Status Updates From The Fall of the Roman Empir...

... the proliferation of monks and hermits and nuns , whatever their moral influence for good, tended to splinter a profoundly divided society still further...So the assertion of Alexander Pope that "the monks finished what the Goths began" contains a measure of truth. They had dropped out of the world, because they found society more than they could endure.

... Valentinian (I) himself was a poor advertisement for judicial balance. For even if we do not believe Ammianus' assurance that he fed victims to pet bears, he was evidently liable to terrible fits of anger, one of which caused his death. And the ferocity with which he ordered summary executions was notorious.

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