The end of Rome's political control certainly did not mark the end of the Roman era: Roman roots had burrowed too deeply. In almost every other facet of European life, economic, social, intellectual, legal, religious, linguistic and artistic, much of the Roman imprint held firm, sometimes for centuries after the political bonds were loosed. The reign of the emperor Commodus is taken as the signpost towards the end of Rome's Golden Age. There had always been a strong religious element in Roman rule, and it deepened as the Empire aged. The Roman world would deliver to the European Middle Ages not only Christianity's holy book, its Bible, but also a huge body of systematic theology. The advent of the barbarians could actually enhance the status of the Roman aristocracy. Late Roman ideas of law and the ways that it regulates the ownership of property were also passed directly into the early Middle Ages in the West.

Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, apparently an African, is probably to be identified with the Theodosius who was Praetorian Prefect of Italy in 430. The picture painted by Macrobius of late fourth-century senatorial society is the very antithesis of that provided by Ammianus Marcellinus. But it is probably going too far to suggest that the desire to rebut Ammianus was high among Macrobius' motives. Wooden and mechanical as much of it is, the Saturnalia is a touching picture of the nostalgia of a class which had been overtaken by events, not the least among which was the conversion to Christianity of the great bulk of the Roman aristocracy. Martianus writes a baroque and convoluted Latin often of extreme obscurity. Throughout the period under review grammar, in its Hellenistic sense of the systematic study of language and literature, continued to form the main content of the education of those who proceeded beyond mere practical ability to read and write.