If people today know anything about the Roman Empire, it is that it fell. This is without a doubt the best-known 'fact' about Ancient Rome, just as Julius Caesar is the most famous Roman. Rome's fall is memorable because its empire lasted for so long - more than five hundred years after Caesar's death in Italy and the western provinces, and three times as long in the east, where emperors would rule from Constantinople until the fifteenth century. The Roman Empire was also exceptionally large - no other power has ever controlled all the lands around the Mediterranean - and left traces behind in many countries. Even today its monuments are spectacular - the Colosseum and Pantheon in Rome itself, as well as theatres, aqueducts, villas and roads dotted throughout the provinces. No other state would construct such a massive network of all-weather roads until the nineteenth century, and in many countries such systems would not be built until the twentieth century. The Roman Empire is often seen as very modern and highly sophisticated - glass in windows, central heating, bath houses and the like - especially by visitors to museums and monuments. This makes Rome's fall all the more remarkable, especially since the world that emerged from its ruin appears so primitive by contrast. The Dark Ages remain fixed in the popular mind, even if the term has long since been abandoned by scholars.
- From How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower by Adrian Goldsworthy
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