How was knowledge ‘lost’ after the fall of Rome? : AskHistorians

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Commonly known history states that after the fall of the Roman Empire fell Western Europe went into a backwards period of the dark ages not fully...

So just looking at western Europe and north Africa (where the empire fell the first and furthest), there are several processes that take place. First, though, it is important to understand what people mean when they say that knowledge was lost. There are basically three things that this can mean. The first is that texts were lost. The ancient world had a lot of authors, a lot of readers, and a lot of books. Many of these were lost. We only have 7 plays by Sophocles, when we know that he wrote many more. Augustine of Hippo writes about the impact that Cicero's "Hortensius" had on him; we have…

How was knowledge ‘lost’ after the fall of Rome? : AskHistorians

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