<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/cc52bfe3-c15a-4b89-a2f9-018144e3b60d/5B808D63-F358-41D5-BC44-DEFDEE656213/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Europe&oldid=218018661" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Europe&oldid=218018661" style="font-size: 11px;">en.wikipedia.org</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=History_of_Europe&oldid=218018661"><P>The Roman Empire had been repeatedly attacked by barbarian hordes from Northern Europe and in 476, Rome finally fell. <A title="Romulus Augustus" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Augustus">Romulus Augustus</A>, the last <A title="Roman Emperors" class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Emperors">Emperor</A> of the <A title="Western Roman Empire" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Roman_Empire">Western Roman Empire</A> surrendered to the Germanic King <A title="Odoacer" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odoacer">Odoacer</A>. British historian <A title="Edward Gibbon" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Gibbon">Edward Gibbon</A> argued in <I><A title="The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" class="mw-redirect" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_and_Fall_of_the_Roman_Empire">The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</A></I> (1776) that the Romans had become decadent, they had lost civic virtue. Gibbon said that the adoption of Christianity, meant belief in a better life after death, and therefore made people lazy and indifferent to the present. "From the eighteenth century onward", Glen W. Bowersock has remarked,<SUP class="reference" id="cite_ref-6"><A title="" href="#cite_note-6">[7]</A></SUP> "we have been obsessed with the fall: it has been valued as an archetype for every perceived decline, and, hence, as a symbol for our own fears." It remains one of the greatest historical questions, and has a tradition rich in scholarly interest.</P></blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/5B808D63-F358-41D5-BC44-DEFDEE656213/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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