@moira@mastodon.murkworks.net @elebertus@eigenmagic.net 476 wasn't a tragedy, but 235 arguably was The assassination of Severus Alexander touched off a 50-year Crisis that destroys the internal trade network, the economy, and basically everything else that mattered... which I would say was the true End of Rome. There is so much we're discovering *now* about where they were then. Archimedes came ⟶⟵ this close to inventing calculus (Ptolomy effectively *did* invent Fourier). People were doing many of the same water mills & manufacturing experiments that the Brits were doing in the early 1700s. Random isolated artisans built sophisticated calculating devices. The Library of Alexandria (which was basically their Internet) was still a going concern at that point... 1/2