This is volume two of the definitive three volume edition that presents a complete and unmodernized text. The author's own comments and nots, and his famous Vindication. This volume reveals how waves of barbarian invaders, under commanders such as Alaric and Attila, overran and eventually destroyed the West. Later sections look further east, where even the legislative and administrative achievements of Justinian and the campaigns of Belisarius could not conceal the fundamental weaknesses of the Byzantine state.