This work is complete fiction containing historical figures & references...'Caveat Emptor'...Each individual's view of the world is singular within which there is a flash of true correlation with the reality of others does ocurr from time to time. However, the completeness of the experience is a general fiction that is atruth for the one person who creates it.

"Let no-one untutored in geometry enter here" - At the gates to Plato's Lyceum Λύκειον, "Lykeion".
"..have mercy on this small black boy down here; preserve him from all men that have no bowels to feel fear" - Herman Melville : Moby-Dick.

When St. Thomas Aquinas read the works of Boethius (480-524? CE), he like those before him found references to an ancient society that existed in Greece, and for which only several fragmentary pieces of evidence existed. This ancient society, wonderfully complex and with hideous undertones, had engaged in dialogue that had been recorded and spanned nearly all of the modern endeavors of the human intellect : science, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy, poetry, literature. He wanted to know more.

The works had not been lost. They could be put together from several disparate elements. From the libraries or Arabia where they passed through serial translations spanning the Arabic languages and perhaps had lost some of the flavour and sharpness of the original texts. Not that the Arabic languages were not capable of storing the value of these texts within their system, but probably because of the natural attrition that occurs with each duplication. The resolution had diminished. Aquinas employed Latin scholars who were learned in Greek to translate these works afresh for him. And so began the seeds of the renaissance. 

Boethius was a statesman, of noble breeding, who had risen to a position of power, through his own abilities, in the Roman courts. He was a prodigious intellect, intimidating to the unschooled mind. His Greek was exemplary and he  learned classical Greek philosophy and science by reading original texts. The ideas of the Greeks are scattered throughout his work "The Consolation of Philosophy". 

In the text of "Consolation" (Book 1 : Part IV)

"...in that the world does not judge actions on their merit, but on their chance results, and they consider that only those things which are blessed with a happy outcome have been undertaken with sound advice. It is always the unfortunate who are first to be deserted by the goodwill of men. "

Now, of course, this is probably not the first time this idea had been expressed, however, we see it emerging as an idea in much of the writing that follows. The example I give here is Jude's soliloquy in the final parts of Judy the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. Here it is:

pending...(time restrictions full-time job impeding immediate publication)...watch this space.

While Boethius sits as one end of this discussion, at the end of the classical civilization, the period of the decline of the Roman Empire, Aquinas stands at the other end, in the period of the beginnings of the Italian renaissance. He knows of the classical text through works that are finding their way into Western Europe, through the writings of Boethius that have survived from the period of Roman decline, the classical text kept in the libraries of the Arabia, brought back by the Crusaders, and those that made their way across from the East with the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire to the Ottomans (texts which contained valuable discussion on the works of Galen).

The Crusades (circa 1095 - 1291 CE) which conducted over several centuries against Muslims by Christian zealots brought about the movement of collected knowledge back from East to West. The translations of the material brought over had gone through several translations - Syrian, Arabic and so on.

Over the third to seventh centuries AD the Roman Empire disintegrated. Theories include an inevitable internal decay, the invitation of external barbarian forces, attacks from barbarians or just a run of bad lack within the empire. This disintegration refers to the Western Roman Empire , whose breadth extended across continental Europe and Britain, which was soon replaced by the various tribes controlling various regions (i.e. the Franks - now known to us as the French, the Goths and so on).

The period between 400 and 500 AD is particularly rapid. The Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium, continues and does not fall until a century later. In the east, Islam is growing. In the West, Christianity continues its ascent. Jews continue to form functional roles within these societies, filling in holes.

The fall of the Roman Empire marks the end of the classical period of history. The time it takes this fall to occur is also the transition process into the middle ages. With this ends the Roman taxation system - with which comes the redistribution of wealth to the peasant and middle classes.