All history is revisionist. Those dark ages were so called because of people who called their time the enlightenment, throwing a little shade at their past to make themselves seem all the brighter.
I don't know if drewcoo is saying that, but I certainly am. There was plenty of intellectual stagnation during the Roman Empire, and plenty of progress during the Middle Ages. The claim that the Roman Empire was so enlightened while the Middle Ages were stagnation, is revisionism.