Were the Dark Ages truly the lost centuries they are so often portrayed as? How could a world so profoundly shaped by Rome and encompassing such remarkable societies as the Byzantine, Carolingian, and Ottonian empires be anything other than central to the development of Europe? In the Inheritance of Rome, award-winning historian Chris Wickham defies the conventional view of the centuries between AD 400 and 1000 with a work of remarkable scope and rigorous yet accessible scholarship.