Christianity marked the end of Rome. Constantine was the first emperor to convert and also the one to move the capital to Byzantium, where it stood for another ~thousand years.
Religion is just a vehicle (for morality, truth, order, etc.). How societies evolve, how they rise and fall, is fairly well established by now.
http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf
https://pol.foundation/ClimaxofCivilization.html
And anticipating Malthus [Tertullian] added that "pestilence and famine and wars and earthquakes must be regarded as a remedy, as though to prune the insolence of the human race." These prunings did come to the provinces, which were too drained of their
resources to be able to meet them or to recuperate from them when they passed over. The evil days did come to all, bringing wars which the people now coupled with famine and pestilence as intolerable scourges, no longer seeking occasion for fighting as
their ancestors had done, but shuddering when it was forced upon them; for they stood on the defensive, with no glory or booty to gain, and their ease and comfort were at stake. "If the peace of the world could corrupt great souls," wrote Longinus in the
latter half of the third century, "much more does so the interminable war which now oppresses us, and especially the sentiments which direct the present age; for the love of money with which we are all contaminated and the love of pleasure lead us into
slavery and overwhelm our lives, the one disease making us petty, the other vile."
At Rome the utter idleness and vacancy of life, given up wholly to the chase after pleasure, is well depicted in the pages of Ammianus Marcellinus.... The delicacy and effeminacy of the city-bred men showed itself exteriorly in the use of fine raiment
and ointments, in the shaving of the face and even the depilation of the whole body. At Carthage things were even worse. There and throughout Roman Africa, people were said to have all the vices in a superior degree. Many men became women in face, walk,
and dress; and what Clement of Alexandria called "preposterous Venus" was practised openly. As for the women, matrons could not by their dress be distinguished from courtesans. Amou?; other things revived to-day, they dyed their hair yellow. In general, "
luxury has deranged everything," a Christian Father complained : "men play the part of women, and women that of men, contrary to nature; women are at once wives and husbands; and their promiscuous lechery is a public institution."
the Roman soldiers under Gratian, at the end of the fourth century, discarded their cuirasses and helmets; and the heavy weapons of their ancestors, the short sword and the stout pilum, says Gibbon, "insensibly dropped from their feeble hands." At the
same time the barbarians were increasing the weight of their armour, and even ordering it from the work-shops of the empire....
The Roman empire fell before the Germans in the north and the Saracens in the south, primarily because from being stronger than they it had become weaker, while its greater wealth and more favourable situation attracted them. It became weaker than they
partly because the quality of its population had declined, while theirs was improving, and partly because the number of its population had decreased, while theirs was increasing. In one word, its breed was degenerating, while theirs was advancing.
to the only men who might have saved it, if such there were, it was not worth saving, and those men and women who benefited by it were incapable of saving it. Then all the Romans practically became equal again in subjection and poverty, and the natural
inequality of the sexes re-appeared in a reign of violence.
etc.
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