This essay is twofold: firstly, a thorough historical background into the internal decline and external conquest of the Roman empire by "barbarian" Germanic, Hunnish, and Slavic peoples, and the shift of historical control and advancement of Europe from Italian to Germanic peoples. Secondly, a first-hand look at the ancient Roman and Germanic Gothic capital of Ravenna

Decline and Conquest of the Roman Empire, or the Germanic Political Annexation of Roman Western Europe:

By 100CE, the Romans had exerted authority over a domain stretching from the southern moors of Scotland to Iberia, from Dacia (Romania) to Jordan, and from the Greek city-states to Algeria. Despite ruling nearly all of the known world, the Romans were never able to conquer two enemies: the reborn Zoroastrian Iranian state under the Parthian and Sassanid dynasties, and the Germanic "barbarian tribes" and confederations to the north. The military invincibility of the Romans ended in embarrassing disaster in 9CE when several Roman legions marching into central Germania were butchered and sent back to Rome after the German cultural hero Hermann (in Latin "Arminius") united Germanic military confederated states and tribes into a cultural defensive front against the coming Romans. They never were able to press further. Other peoples outside of "barbarian Germania", however, quickly fell victim to the military, economic, and political supremacy of the Romans for the next several hundred years

The period of 200-500CE were a period of gradual decline, schism, internal dispute, pretending leaders, and perceived moral decay. The issue of immorality of the Roman people was allegedly so abhorrent that it encouraged the Roman historian Tacitus to travel to Germania in the late 1st century, where he portrayed the Germans in some way as a type of moral and political role model for the Romans. The Germans were portrayed as simple, honest, sexually and socially moral, not adulterous, religiously pious, well-disciplined, less advanced, and talented warriors. This may simply be the "grass is greener on the other side of the fence" phenomenon that was an attempt to explain a perceived political and moral decline in the Roman empire, or may be true. Nonetheless, a gradual political, social, and moral decline was detected by the Romans in their own lands even whilst military expansion of Rome was at its height of this most magnificent empire that built much of Europe practically from nothing into advancement.

In the early 4th century, a new and near mythified enemy emerged from the plains of the east. Whilst the Germans were deemed too unorganized to directly annex or assault the Romans (though they did both multiple times), this strange force was united under a common banner and leader wise with military and tactical advancement. These were the Hunnish tribes of Atli (or Attila). Their ethnic origin and linguistic roots are today debated. In reality, the steppes of Central Asia from Ukraine and eastern pre-Slavic Poland to the borders of modern China and down to today's Armenia were populated by Iranian peoples called Sarmatians and Scythians. From 400 onward, Turkic peoples began to appear whilst the Iranians of Central Asia declined to insignificance (most dying or returning southward to their ethnic homeland of Sassanid Iran), expelled by the superior and unified hordes of the Turkic peoples. As the Huns meet this timeframe, it is appropriate to imply that the Huns were a pre-Islamic Turkic people with a Turkic-based or isolated language. Mongol people like the Uzbeks and Kazakhs entered Central Asia much later. These Huns were military geniuses well-versed in equestrian tactics. They soon became the triumphal power of Eurasia. Whilst the Romans were unable to conquer the Germans, the Huns quickly succeeded. The military conquest by the Huns of Central and Southern Europe (all of which the Germanic Gothic peoples previously exerted almost universal authority) triggered a migration known as the Age of Migrations. This caused Germans (who were the buffer between the invincible Huns and the Romans to the south) to not only move westward, northward, and southward, but also to coalesce, advance, and culturally and politically unify in the face of foreign annihilation. The Slavic peoples of Russia also began to move westward, also attacking the Romans on occasion.

The Hunnish advance ended and declined quickly and stunningly after the death of Attila, but the legacy of their reign could not be reversed, all at the expense of the Romans. Within 100 years, the Germanic peoples (tribes, confederations, and states) had conquered, populated, and developed a variety of nations and states in Celtic England and Scotland, in Roman-ruled Iberia (Spain and Portugal), in modern France, in all of Germany, in nearly all of the Balkans and southern Europe, had conquered the rich trade city of Carthage in Tunisia, and had conquered most of northern Italy. The new growing superpower in western Europe -- the massive German empire of the Merovingians -- quickly annexed nearly all of France and Germany. Political decline and internal squabbling of the Romans, as well as the Hunnish invasion had quickly caused economic and political control over Europe to shift from the unified Roman empire into a number of non-unified ethnic Germanic-ruled states all across Europe. The Germans -- previously adherents of the religion of Odin, Thor, Tyr, and Baldr -- quickly began to convert to Christendom as a result of internal conversion by their leaders. The duty to spread the faith in Christ and the one true God also accelerated the unification and exertion of force of other previously-tribal Germans into full political states.

In 476, the Gothic Germanic king Audawakar (Odoacer in Latin) formally destroyed the Roman Empire forever when he expelled and overthrew the last Roman emperor Romulus Augustus (ROMVLVS AVGVSTVS). This unfathomable triumph was eased by the reality that the Roman state was basically a dead horse for nearly a century prior due to as much internal decline as external conquest. The Roman Empire was in such decline, calamity, and bankruptcy that many Italian leaders and priests encouraged German invasion due to their ability to enforce widespread military authority and control over peoples on the brink of anarchy. The Germanic king Alarik the Great had previously taken Rome in the early 5th century temporarily, revealing that the former Roman superpower was practically in a state of collapse. After Audawakar's conquest, formerly-Roman ruled Italy was then ruled by several German Gothic nations-states. Before the murder of the Roman Empire, the capital had been moved from Rome to Milan, and then again south to Ravenna. This capital of Ravenna became the capital of the new Germanic kingdoms therein. By the 4th century, most of the German leaders had converted from Odinism and Tyrism (today called "Norse Mythology") to Arian Christendom, and many had shifted from writing in Runic to Latin-based script. Arianism is a type of heretical Christendom which dictates that Jesus and God cannot possibly be equal, a doctrine formally deemed incomprehensible by the Catholics and the Orthodox. By 500, a German king to the north called Theodoric the Great (Theidareik) of another Gothic kingdom near modern Slavic Slovenia and Croatia offered his service to the church in Italy, promising that he would unify and contain the various German kingdoms in Italy and protect the supremacy of the growing Papacy. Theodoric quickly conquered nearly all of the German nations in southern Europe (killing Odoacer with them), annexing all of Italy. Therefore, from his capital at Ravenna, Theodoric became King of Italy and King of the Goths, and the most powerful man in Western Europe. This domain was short-lived; the Byzantines returned to save their destroyed Roman partners' lands and conquered all of Italy under the glorious Greek (Byzantine) king Justinian I. This authority would soon also be supplanted as another German nation marched westward. These Germanic Lombarden (also Arian-faith Christians by majority) expelled the Greeks, ruling again from Ravenna until they were conquered by the Catholic German emperor Karl the Great (Charlemagne) of his Holy "Roman" Empire of the German Nation (heiliges roemisches Reich deutscher Nation) in the 9th century for the final period of German rule in Italy.

The Greek superpower built by Alexander fragmented into pieces in under a decade before the Roman conquest, and the Roman empire that built much of Europe from nothing into commercial civilization had collapsed in a similar fashion, with its territory over all of Europe inherited by the "barbarian" German kings whom soon brought the collapsed domains of the long-dead Roman state into sociopolitical stability for the time being. This dramatic shift of authority over Europe appropriately inspired German philosopher Hegel to refer to the historical period from 500 onward as "the Germanic Era", as the creation of Western Europe's great powers England, France, the Holy Roman Empire (Germany), the Slavs' Kievan Rus, and the nexus of future Spain were all built under this post-Roman Germanic barbarian sword. This heritage was later, unfortunately, applied to the politics of the bloodthirsty Third Reich during World War II. The "barbarians" had actually triumphed over Western Europe's superpower, uniting Europe with the offer of stability in the face of total collapse of the Roman economic state, the coming Islamic Jihad, the invasion of the Slavs, virtual anarchy, assaults by Turkic peoples, the threat of global revolutions to alleviate the political and economic instability. A dramatic twist of fate.

First-hand look at the Roman and Gothic capital of Ravenna:

Though his wealthy and thriving reign was short-lived in the Roman, Gothic German, and Byzantine regional capital of Ravenna, Theodoric built a number of fantastic and ancient treasures that make this tiny Italian city a historical gem, and one of the only remnants of anti-Trinity Christian (Arian) churches in Europe that survived Catholic and Orthodox persecution. Due to the constant international wars and regional conflicts that wrought Italy just after the Roman collapse, the exchange of authority over the region by dozens of nations, and brutal purges of Gothic and heretical Christian monuments, nowhere but in Ravenna can a historian or tourist experience the achievements of Gothic states with such preservation. The city of Ravenna today remains distinctly Italian -- as ethnic Germans have not held political authority here for nearly 800 years -- but offers a wide array of Roman, German, and to a lesser extent Byzantine monuments in all their glory, allowing a visitor to directly study this fascinating shift from Roman authority to Gothic, then to Byzantine, then again to German Lombard, and then finally back to the native Italians. This quiet, comfortable, and clean city (unusually so for an Italian big city) offers the chance to walk from a tomb built 1,000 years ago to a restaurant built yesterday, and to a church built 1,500 years ago, and to experience Greek, Italian, and German architecture in the same city. Its ancient loins and structures remain upright today with fantastic preservation, though many deemed 'heretical' were of course burnt or looted.

Ravenna today is relatively clean with little graffiti, few cars, little crime, and a generally politically and socially conservative population in comparison with some of the local Communist-plagued cities in northern Italy like Bologna whose Communist youth have virtually crippled that once-great city's society and economy with graffiti on literally every wall of the city. The center of the city of Ravenna is notably old and ancient, whilst the outer expanded portions of the city are upright and modern. Cars are not allowed in some parts. The city of Ravenna, having been the former capital of so many regional conquering empires, takes great pride its treasures and history with signs to monuments all over the city. Tourist groups can be seen in Ravenna daily, usually ethnic Germans investigating their early ethnic heritage of the growing Germanic world empires. The city today is primarily Italian, but interestingly has quite a huge black immigrant population along with a smaller Arab minority. There are few black youths and few women; most are older and noticeably well-composed and well-dressed immigrants from Senegal, Nigeria, Niger, and Muslim black West Africa. The local Italians were keen to point out their distaste for the booming immigration to their city, and blame the immigrants for a sudden spike in drug abuse, unemployment, crime, and illiteracy which only increased after the immigrant influx. Some locals blame Arab Muslim immigrants for more of the problems in Ravenna because of their near-militant opposition to Italian politicians and authority, or so it is said by many locals. The blacks here appear to attempt integration (though the acceptance is not mutual with the Italians) in the sense that their clothing and dress is far from their Islamic roots of Muslim-dominated Wolof Senegal. The growth in social problems are, as in the rest of Europe, also blamed on the white Slavic Albanians and Romanians whom more and more are exploiting the open job market of the wealthier west. Each group is considered an economic and social drain, whether or not any of this clash is warranted or necessary. Many come from big cities here to work. Though there is far from general cultural tolerance between the two groups, this social clash is noticed by most of the immigrants who try hard to gain acceptance typically to no avail, a feature unheard of in Europe's big cities. There are few restaurants, but many bars, and gas stations offer a full selection of whisky and wine to one's surprise.

A single fee paid at a historical center offers entry over the course of several days to all of the city's major historical sites on one pass. A five-minute walk down a few blocks of the city center reveal a horde of unique other churches, monasteries, and tombs. As Italians are a Catholic ethnic group, all of the city's churches have been firmly Catholic or converted from Arian Christendom (anti-Trinity or "Messianic fallibility" faiths) to Catholicism. There are a number of "modern" churches built around 1000 or 1400 for public entry, with Catholic chants playing from loudspeakers. This was very unusual for Christendom, and generally only experienced in Hindu or Islamic societies. A major monument in the city center commemorates the sacrifices of Italian soldiers in their many wars: the wars for unification of Italy under Giuseppe between Piedmonte-Sardinia and their rivals to the north, World War I, colonial wars in Africa (Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, etc.), and World War II. The backdrop of this monument is shamed by a large red graffiti sentence that locals say is the work of immigrants or Communist youths.

A walk down the street reveals a very unique and large cathedral with an ancient brick structure next to a large minaret-like spire tower whose appearance is uncommon in Christian faith churches. This original church, built in the 6th century CE, was actually the central main Church of Theodoric the Great himself! Thus, it is one of Europe's sole standing non-Trinitarian churches to remain today as it adhered to the doctrine of Arius, whose heretical beliefs stipulated that Jesus and God were unequal and completely incomparable. After the temporary destruction of German rule of Italy by the Byzantines under the magnificent emperor Justinian I (an Orthodox Greek Christian), the church was forcibly converted into an Orthodox church in Justinian's honor. Original mosaics of Justinian ("JVSTINIANVS") can still be seen in the church. After the Byzantines were expelled by the succeeding Lombardic Arian Germans shortly thereafter, and after the Germans of the Holy Roman Empire (under Karl the Great/Charlemagne) annexed the capital of Ravenna in the 9th century, the city and its churches were forcibly converted to Catholicism as seen ever since. This church, whose spire on the side has tilted much like the Tower of Pisa in Tuscany, has an interior that for its time is nearly incomparable in the world. A large white and wooded ceiling is supported by large pillars with intricate etchings. Massive mosaics made of pure gold leaf can be seen wrapping around the entire church. More than 1,500 years old, these fantastic works of art (both made by the Germans under Theodoric's authority, the later Byzantine Greeks, and future Italian city-states) are literally in mint condition it seems. Almost no chipping, smudge, or imperfection can be seen on these works of art or mosaics that long outlived the Roman and Greek empires multifold. New murals added by the Italian Catholics much later can also be seen next to original 1,500-year-old marble statues, paintings, and frescoes from the German, Greek, and Italian (non-Roman) periods. No photography or filming is allowed therein to prevent the entropy and decay of this bizarrely-unnoticed world monument.

Leaving the church around the corner, one may find one of the world's sole Arian-faith baptisteries, the official Arian-faith Baptistery of Theodoric the Great sunken into ground next to another large Catholic church that was originally commissioned by Theodoric also before its conversion. This is one of the few baptistery buildings that can be entered in the world, as baptism has since generally been performed in churches outside of the Mandaean faith in the Arab world whose faith is believed to have sprung from John the Baptist himself. John is in this baptistery of Ravenna praised as its central theme: a massive ceiling mosaic of gold more than 1,500 years old covers this small building in original mint condition. The ceiling decoration shows a number of white-robed holy saints or disciples with halos atop their heads watching John's baptism of Jesus of Nazareth with a white dove atop to, allegedly, signify the Holy Ghost's presence in the man upon this "true birth" (baptism). In this image, baptism of Jesus was done in the nude at an adult age with the entire body. This may indicate that this was the method of baptism in German Arian-faith tradition. The surrounding room is at this point empty with several recesses in the corners perhaps to hold separate baptisms at the same time, often to adult converts instead of infants borne thereof. After the brief Byzantine conquest under Justinian and the later Catholic authority of the native Italians as seen today, this blasphemous baptistery was closed and converted into a Catholic shrine.

A drive to the outskirts of the city center reveals easily one of the most magnificent buildings extant on earth. It was not built by Germans nor Greeks, but rather the R. native Italians. This allows a visitor to see not only the importance of Ravenna in history, but also to see first hand the shift from Roman rule to German, from German to Greek, from Greek back to German (Lombardic) and later to the Germans in Germany under Charlemagne, and finally to the native Italians once again. This church, called the Basilica di San Vitale, was built by Bishop Ecclesio (522-532) with the approval of Pope John I for honoring a Roman soldier who was martyred during the Roman persecution of the Christian minority centuries prior. Having seen the world over, other than the Pyramids of Giza and Stonehenge perhaps, this single cathedral easily surpasses all of the cathedrals of Europe, the Orthodox Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (converted to a mosque after the Turkish Jihad succeeded), and approaches or even surpasses the glory of the Vatican's cathedrals. This massive sunken cathedral, more than 1,400 years old, is breathtaking. Nearly a hundred feet tall, nearly every inch of this domed cathedral is covered in original mosaic, gold, gem, jewel, marble, fresco, or statue easily in mint condition. There are endless depictions of saints, apostles, biblical scenes, sacrificial animals (including a strange lamb to symbolize Jesus of Nazareth), stories of the Crucifixion, Revelations, the Great Flood, the revelation of the Ten Commandments to Moses (with a Burning Bush shown), the Assumption of Mary into heaven, the Nativity scene, the incomplete sacrifice of Isaac (or as Muslims claim, Ishmail) by Abraham, etc. Staring at the church's interior for hours would not reveal every depiction or intricate artistic creation this church has to offer. It is sad that a building whose majesty rivals any world wonder is virtually unknown, along with the importance of the city of Ravenna in history from the Roman period to the German and onward.

A walk outside to a local small church, designed in the traditional shape of a cross, offers a small mausoleum to two figures important to the region. It too was not built by Germans not Greeks. Built too in the 5th century, the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia was intended to honor the assumption of the daughter of Theodosius the Great into heaven (the Roman emperor who required Christendom of all Romans for the first time, with punishment of death to all pagans and especially Jews who rejected the command). Her mortal remains are not housed here though. The building is 12.75 metres long and 10.25 metres wide as a cross. The interior is small but radiant; there are attractive non-Christian and Christian mosaics all over the interior, though the artwork is more faded than in the glorious church. Entrants may not use cameras and must leave after a few minutes oddly. The artistic design is interesting in that there is little Greek influence here (that one would expect for a Byzantine emperor's daughter's honorary tomb), but rather a pre-Christian Roman style. There are depictions of the Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) inside as well as a number of angels and artistic symbols. The multiple tombs in the room apparently house no corpses, but once did. They are in the non-Christian style of the Roman past interestingly, but the original "blasphemous inscriptions" were forbidden and etched away after the Byzantine conquest of the city from the Goths of Theodoric. It is unclear what type of inscription this was: German Runic, Greek, Aramaic, or simply a blasphemous or non-Christian passage in Latin? No photos are allowed here.

Though the city offers several more monuments dating to the same period more than 1,400 years ago with equally fantastic glory, the most famous monument of the city in its hinterlands is the Tomb of Theodoric the Great, where his physical body was interned after his death. It shows the classical Gothic style in its preserved original style. It was erected here because of its location in a local German cemetery before Christendom was established as the state faith of the Italians. Unfortunately, this location was in a swamp, which caused the tomb to be covered in water for more than 500 years. As a consequence, the exterior is wondrously in great condition but the interior is literally vacant and empty. Ethnic hatred for the Germans and religious hatred for the Arian Christians by the Greeks and Italians also discouraged any preservation effort, and many of the glorious gold valuables in the tomb were stolen or collected by locals later. A massive dome atop the structure, originally probably entirely covered in gold leaf, was added miraculously as a 500-ton single piece atop the structure; an architectural oddity. There is also a cross at the peak. A long path to the tomb allows one to enter the lower level and the top level; the lower level is literally empty entirely. None knows what was housed in the lower level originally: perhaps a holy Bible, perhaps hordes of sacrificial treasures for the afterlife, perhaps the bodies of his many slaves who died with him, perhaps simply massive mosaics on the walls that are now vacant. A walk up the original stairs to the top level reveals a similar upsetting fact: the top floor is also nearly empty. Instead of endless hordes of treasure one would expect from a wealthy and powerful dictator-king, there is nearly nothing but stone walls and pigeons. There is, however, blatant evidence that elaborate frescoes and mosaics of solid gold, gems, jewels, and marble once adorned this important mausoleum. Faded text can also be seen wrapping around the room in German in the Latin and also perhaps originally German Runic scripts (the script of the Gothic kingdoms and most Germans at the time). There is a large original cross made of stone in the corner of the room in a strange recess in the wall perhaps for treasures or his corpse originally. The ceiling reveals a washed-away (by the waters of the swamp) "X" shape that was probably actually a cross or a halo to imply his ascent to heaven or divine protection. The center of the room (probably relocated there later) reveals Theodoric's original sarcophagus. It is a bizarre and unique massive red marble coffin with a very large and wide interior. The sides are smashed and cracked; there is no top at this point. The interior is also empty. His body was removed and desecrated by the Byzantines after they destroyed his pagan and heretical empire, some say, though it may have been relocated to protect from erosion later or was washed away by the swamp waters. The tomb survived American and British bombing during World War II, an odd target due to its lack of importance to the war effort, and the fact that no Italian would care if his tomb were destroyed; perhaps it was either an accident or an effort to anger the race-based German state to the north, where Heinrich Himmler and other SS leaders considered the tomb a type of pilgrimage site for ethnic Germans (Volkdeutsche).

The European continent that the Romans built from virtually nothing into various degrees of civilization had declined into virtual anarchy after less than 600 years of world conquest, and the "barbarian" Germanic, Slavic, and Turkic (Hunnic) peoples had annexed nearly all of their former domains, bringing a new brand of self-interested continental civilization to replace the failed Roman one before it. This transition, easily the most important historical shift in world history, can only be studied to such a degree first hand in this quiet and timeless city of Ravenna, a capital to German and Italian empires alike for nearly a thousand years.