According to some historians, the fall of the Roman Empire wasn’t pre-ordained. By AD 300 it had its problems, including far-flung, hard-to-defend borders and recurring currency crises, but was generally stable and prosperous. Then a new power arose in the East. The Huns were horse archers who could out-ride and out-shoot their neighbors, and they terrorized the Vandals and Goths who lived in what is now Germany and the Balkans, driving them west to Rome’s borders. Rome chose to let half a million “barbarians” enter, hoping to use them as soldiers and laborers. Instead, it found itself with invading armies and unstable, uncontrollable political coalitions. The complete story is winding, convoluted and full of unfamiliar names, but it ends with the division of the Empire into two parts and the destruction of the original, Italian half.”