Quote by Chris Wickham
““By around 480, as he put it, ‘now that the old degrees of official rank are swept away . . . the only token of nobility will henceforth be a knowledge of letters’; the official hierarchy had gone, only traditional Roman culture survived.””
![“[Roman] society became steadily more cosmopolitan. By 212 A.D., all inhabitants of the empire, except for slaves, were deemed to be citizens. The old Roman aristocracy was not fixated upon race and color. Wealth and literacy were what opened the doors of their urban mansions and country villas.” quote by Norman F. Cantor](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/9b0/norman-f-cantor-15048_quote_roman-society-became-steadily-more-cosmo_2570105.jpg)
