A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within.  The essential causes of Rome’s decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars.

. . .  a disordered government had left Italy poorer than before.  The cause, however, was no inherent exhaustion of the soil, no change in climate, but the negligence and sterility of harassed and discouraged men.

Biological factors were more fundamental. . . . It has been questioned, but the mass importation of barbarians into the Empire by Aurelius, Valentinian, Aurelian, Probus, and Constantine leaves little room for doubt.

 

— Will Durant, Caesar and Christ (1944), Epilogue

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