THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE <i> By Michael Grant (Collier: $12.95, illustrated) </i>

The popular image of the fall of Rome, created by Victorian novelists, Fundamentalist preachers and Hollywood moguls, is a languid tableau of indolent patricians lolling on cushions with garlanded courtesans. The reality was more prosaic and dismayingly familiar.

Michael Grant’s short history of the last century of the empire’s existence in the West (c. 364-476 AD) focuses on the internal divisions and weaknesses that left Rome vulnerable to a succession of foreign invaders; a vast, unresponsive government bureaucracy; staggering military expenditures that burdened the people least able to pay them; a widening gap between the very rich and very poor that undermined the status of the middle class; a society divided along ethnic, religious and class lines; an increasingly intolerant religious establishment that persecuted any idea perceived as heterodoxy. Faced with a disintegrating society, the mediocrities who assumed the throne hastened to assure the people of the imminent restoration of the tattered imperial glory. The cry that heralded the end of the empire was not “Here come the Goths!” but “It’s morning in Rome again.”