Professor Ferdinand Lot of Paris is well known as a
leading authority on the France of the Merovingians and Carlovingians. In The End of the Ancient World (Routledge, 21s.)—a new volume in the remarkable series entitled " The History of Civilization "—Professor Lot sums up the labours of a lifetime with the ease and clarity that we have learned to expect from French scholars. He is concerned with the collapse of the Roman Empire and the rise of new barbaric powers in the Mediterranean lands between the fourth and eighth centuries. Professor Henri Berr in a long introduction discusses the old question as to when the Middle Ages may be said to begin and end. Professor Lot is less uncertain about the answer. He regards the fall of Rome as a calamity, and holds that with it a new and brutal age began. No reader of Gregory of Tours can seriously dispute Professor Lot's comments on the Merovingians in France and their contemporaries elsewhere. They filled a void left by the disappearance of Rome, but they did not regenerate Western Europe. All of them were weak, detestable and transitory. New forces were emerging under them, but not because of them. The old term Dark Ages " is really appropriate to the epoch which Professor Lot portrays in this masterly book. * * * *
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