I agree with Mr Scott's views.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall is chock full of errors because Gibbon didn't have the arcehological and histroical evidence future generations of historians would have access to.

Rome was sacked in 410, but in Byzantium things continued to go gangbusters

In 425, just 15 years later, Theodosius II founded the Pandidakterion, a university that had 31 chairs, including mathematics and astronomy. It remained in continuous operation until the Ottoman conquest of 1453 ( more than a 1,000 years) and can be said to be the world's first university, a claim usually made by the University of Bologna.

A century later, in the 520s Justinian arrives on the scene. His rule is one of unprecedented brilliance. His general Belisarius reconquers all of N. Africa, Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, and established outposts ( comptoirs ) in the south of France.

Then there works like Hagia Sophia, the developement of Gregorian Chants and  Greek Fire, a kind of napalm.

There is also evidence that in the 6th century, Byzantine Syrian monks had discovered how to make batteries and had learned how to electroplate objects with gold and there also a great deal of evidence to sauggest the byzantrines understood the principles of steam engines.

One wonders just what would have happened had the Arabs not come along. Were the Byzantines in the process of stumbling upon the basics of modern science? Would the world have undergone an industrial revolution in the 9th century instead of the 19th?

The arrival os islam destroyed all of that wonderful and tantalising potential

As regards John P's comment with the question at the end - what Byzantium might have become, had Islam not come into existence (and let's remember, sans Islam the path to the East would have remained clear, so that cultural exchange and trade with India and China could have gone on unimpeded).

In David Bentley Hart's book 'Atheist Delusions: the Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies' (actually, he should just have called it 'the Christian Revolution'; much more fun) he includes two fascinating pieces of information about 5th/ 6th century Byzantium that to my mind confirm John P's speculations.

1/ In his sixth chapter, 'The Death and Rebirth of Science', Hart describes the scientific theorising of the 6th-century Christian, John Philoponus.  "He not only argued against the immutability of the stars, but (even more outrageously) denied that the terrestrial and celestial regions possessed distinct natures.  That the heavens above the moon are eternal, that their substance is the incorruptible 'quintessence' ether, that the stars possess spiritual intelligence...all of this was part of the firm and unalterable picture of reality to which practically every Greek scientific philosopher, or educated layman, devoutly adhered...Philoponus, however, argued that one could deduce from certain variations among the known stars themselves that they are mutable objects, composed not of imperishable ether and divine intellect but of corruptible matter, and that they once came into existence and one day will perish like other material objects; the sun, he said, consists in fire, of the same basic substance as earthly fire; and he argued that the appearance of changelessness in the heavens is the effect merely of the immense temporal and spatial intervals of cosmic movement.  For him - being a Christian - the entire universe was the creature of God, and the terrestrial and celestial realms alike were part of one natural order governed by the same rational laws.  And so it was no great trial of faith (as it would have been for a pagan philosopher) to deny the divinity of the night sky; which is to say, Philoponus was able to cast off metaphysical dogma and apply himself to a rigorous reconsideration of the science of his time not despite but because of his Christianity and his consequent impatience for any 'superstitious' confusion between material objects and gods.

"He also hypothesized that the space above the atmosphere might be a vacuum.  He argued, against Aristotle, that light moves, and that the eye receives it simply according to the rules of optical geometry.  And, most important perhaps, he rejected the Aristotelian dynamic theory of motion and proposed in its place a theory of kinetic impetus..." (see pp. 69-70)  All this, in the 6th century.  And note well, he was NOT attacked as a heretic.

2/ In chapter 13 'the face of the faceless' Hart notes that it was in Christian Byzantium, in Gregory of Nyssa's fourth sermon on the book of Ecclesiastes, preached during Lent in AD 379, that we have the first known abolitionist sermon preached by a leading Christian theologian.

 Hart writes that this sermon 'comprises a long passage unequivocally and indignantly condemning slavery as an institution. [the italics are Hart's] That is to say, in this sermon Gregory does not simply treat slavery as an extravagance in which Christians ought not to indulge beyond the dictates of necessity, nor does he confine himself to denouncing the injustices and cruelties of which slaveholders are frequently guilty...He directs his anger not at the abuse of slavery but at its use: he reproaches his parishioners not for mistreating their slaves but for daring to imagine that they have the right to own other human beings in the first place".  (Get the book and read that chapter - there's a lot more. And although Gregory of Nyssa is the only person recorded as preaching against slavery as such, from that early in the piece, Hart does show that slavery, as an institution, somehow became far less prevalent in medieval Christendom than it had been in pagan Greco-Roman societies - or in pre-Christian barbarian European societies).

Interestingly, its decline goes in tandem with the proliferation of a lot of labour-saving technological inventions - for more on which, and some interesting discussion, see chapter 7 of an intriguing book by an Indian writer, one Vishal Mangalwadi, entitled "The Book that Made Your World' ['The Book' is the Bible; 'Your World' is 'the Christian/ised Western world' - CM].

Just to add to what Christina said, I'd like to point out what are called the Paris Salters. they're seires of paintings or frescoes ( can't remember which ) that predate the renaissance by centuries ( they date from the 9th or 10th century) and yet which were executed in classical style.

Byzantine iconography is stiff...as though they'd lost some artistic abilities or techniques common to classical Rome... but these works are done in a completely natural style and clearly demonstrate that classical forms of art, though less common, nonetheless continued under the Byzantines.

I was quite astounded to learn that.

In light of that, it is strange that when  we refer to something as "Byzantine", we generally mean it as an insult.

A bit more info....

http://www.ninevehsoft.com/fiorina.htm