[eastof]

They were going crazy by the end, their collapse made space for the Islamic Golden Age, which is the main reason we have any surviving texts from the classical era. They were much more open to foreign ideas and had a focus on translation at a time when orthodoxy and nativism prevailed under Rome's rule.

[FredPret]

The only reason we needed classical texts rescued by Islamic scholars in the first place is because the Roman empire collapsed.

We’d have vastly more texts if it didn’t.

Not saying it was good or bad.