Chapter 2 Summary and Analysis

Leisure is necessary for learning to thrive, and the chaos that the barbarians introduce destroys Europe's leisure class. Between Alaric's sack of Rome in 410 CE and the death of the last Western emperor in 476, the Imperium destabilizes. Large landowners grow independent. The court abandons Rome for Ravenna, and looting by Romans becomes widespread. The dispossessed turn to highway robbery and form an incipient Mafia. The kidnapping of children becomes the stuff of fairy tales. "Rapacious bullies" foreclose on properties whose deeds are lost. Spain, Gaul, and grain-rich North Africa are lost by the 430s. Goths and Huns plunder from the East through Italy. The legions are withdrawn from Britain, opening it to Anglo-Saxon raids. Great landlords redeem enslaved freemen and women, only to turn them into lifelong serfs. The Irish, fine sailors, navigate their stealthy, skin-covered coracles to isolated farms, and...