So the roads were not paved after the 4th century due to plague and not a failed civilized administration? Would you consider the Merovingians as civilized as the Phoenicians?
I think the story is really one of the failure of the ability to raise taxes for the maintenance of armies and civil infrastructure rather than some inherent "civilized" or "uncivilized" character of any particular people.
You can't raise taxes when half or more of the population is gone. As per WP: "Some historians believe the first plague pandemic was one of the deadliest pandemics in history, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 15–100 million people during two centuries of recurrence, a death toll equivalent to 25–60% of Europe's population at the time of the first outbreak"
And this is after a couple generations of political turmoil, other plagues, and invasions.
We know remarkably little about the Phoenicians, though. So it's not really a fair comparison, based on what we do and by modern standards Merovingians would probably be considered to be more civilized.
