It's called that pejoratively against the post-roman era because petrarch was, in the fad of his time, a classical antiquity fetishist and considered the romans

It's called that pejoratively against the post-roman era because petrarch was, in the fad of his time, a classical antiquity fetishist and considered the romans the "light" against which the darkness was compared. It isn't used by modern historians because that concept and the light-vs-dark dichotomy isn't useful, as a historical practice. The idea that all local order collapsed with the roman empire is simply mythology, anachronistic veneration of a hierarchical system of power. The romans were at least as violent as anything that came after. The idea that they provided unique stability in exchange for that violence is the roman justification for it. Vestigial propaganda from 2000 years ago. We are not obligated to accept it and in fact modern historians typically do not. The facts of history may not change, but our understanding of it develops like any other academic discipline. Maybe don't reject a generation's worth of development in a complex field because your surface-level appraisal makes you sad. > Do not say, “Why is it that the former days were better than these?” For it is not from wisdom that you ask about this.