The Apollinaris set still enjoys its hot baths and its tennis; as Dill puts it, the barbarian might rule the land, but the laws of polite society would be administered as before.
But when you look again you realize that it is not the same.

It is not merely because we know that even these remnants of the social and material civilization of Rome would soon themselves die away that the tragedy of the sixth century looms so dark.

It is because when we look below the surface we see that the life has gone out of it all, the soul that inflamed it is dead, nothing is now left but the empty shell.

These men welcome Fortunatus just because he comes from Italy, where the rot has gone less far, where there still survives some reputation for learning and for culture.

They slake their nostalgia a little in the presence of that _enfant perdue_ of a lost civilization.
For this is the world of Gregory of Tours, of which you may read in his _History of the Franks_.