In 397 Honorius has to pass an edict forbidding the wearing of German fashions within the precincts of Rome.
And in the end, half barbarian themselves, they have only barbarians to defend them against barbarism.
Such was the general picture of the great ruin of civilization amidst which the Romans of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries lived.

What then did it feel like to live at a time when civilization was going down before the forces of barbarism?
Did people realize what was happening?
Did the gloom of the Dark Ages cast its shadow before?
It so happens that we can answer these questions very clearly if we fix our eyes on one particular part of the Empire, the famous and highly civilized province of Gaul.

We can catch the decline at three points because in three consecutive centuries, Gallo-Roman writers have left us a picture of their life and times.

In the fourth century we have Ausonius, in the fifth Sidonius Apollinarius, in the sixth Gregory of Tours and Fortunatus, a stranger from Italy, who made his home in Poitiers.

They show us Auvergne and the Bordelais in the evening light.