I realize there was no exact 'point' the Empire fell, but when it was a faint shadow of what it was what happened to the wealthiest citizens in the most prosperous areas? What happened to the commoners in the less prosperous areas?
Edit: An sub/clarifying question: Was there any sort of stigma regarding true 'Romans'? For instance, were there ever hostilities the conquered peoples had against the Romans for being conquered? Did they discriminated against the ‘Romans’ once the might of the legions wasn't at their back? Or were they assimilated to the point that they identified more as being Roman than whatever they traditionally were?
Edit 2: You guys are awesome.
The answer to this all depends on regions, but in most cases, the fate of the common farmer remained unchanged. They continued to be farmers. It's just who they paid their rent/tribute to changed. For the wealthy though, that's a different matter.
For example in southern France and coastal Spain, almost nothing happened to the wealthiest citizens or the common farmers. Most of the Roman aristocracy kept their estates (although there was probably a reduction in the scale of their holdings due to trade and barbarian settlement issues), and were still referring to themselves by Roman titles into the 6th century for Spain, 7th for Gaul. The average tenant farmer continued to be a farmer after the fact in both cases.
But in Italy, many of the most prestigious senators from the old families were killed by the Goths once they were losing the war. The Gothic War also caused a massive famine, which killed many of the peasants of the countryside. Procopius has some brutal tales of two women who lured starving men into their house in order to kill and eat them. Or emaciated bodies out in the dessicated fields too weak to pull bits of grass out to eat in order to survive.
In Britain, the wealthy and the middle class completely vaporized after the withdrawal of the legions and Roman economic integration. However, despite all this, the farmers who were still the 90% of the population, seemed to have not abandoned their fields (except for the more marginal areas). So new social and power structures had to restructure themselves from the old ones, albeit significantly more localized and poorer.
Egypt and the Levant, like Gaul and Spain, seems to have been mostly unimpacted for everybody, with the exception of the tip top of political leadership and the garrisoning of Arab soldiers. Urban culture, the economic network, the wealthy, the middle and the poor, seemed to have managed the transition fairly well, with the addition of a slow conversion to Islam as the main religion.
Whereas Byzantium in comparison saw the disappearance of the wealthy elite, but the folding of that elite into the state bureaucracy. Farmers in anatolia were greatly impacted by the insecurity of Arab raiding, and many switched to pastoralism as their main source of income. It took about 200 years for the aristocracy and trade to re-emerge to somewhat stable levels, though never at the scale of what was available before the Arab conquests.
In a nutshell, if you were a peasant, likely nothing changed except who you paid your rent to (although it was likely lower than under Roman times). If you were the middle class, your life would remain mostly the same in the areas under Arab control, everywhere else your role would probably disappear and meld into being a farmer. If you were rich, in all places you were less rich than in Roman times, but in some you would maintain the semblance of city/regional power. In other regions, you would cease being rich as others would've taken over as the new rich. Keep in mind the transition that I just described likely took decades if not hundreds of years.
I can't claim to fully know, but the matter of fact is that whilst the Roman empire as we see it ended, the Eastern half, or the Byzantine Empire carried on until its own fall in 1453, which gave birth to the Ottoman Empire. Only slightly unrelated!
As the Western half "fell" in 476 the Goths and Vandals took over much of the land that the Romans left behind, and would have of course attempted to assimilate the "native" population. In fact under the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in the 6th Century and his unparalleled general Belasarius, the Eastern Empire conquered Rome and and much of the lost territory in an attempt to restore itself to its former glory.
Here is a map of the extent of his conquest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Justinian555AD.png
He was the last "Roman" Emperor however as a plague swept through the Empire and claimed the lives of 250,000 in the Mediterranean alone, and possibly even 25 million around the world. This left the Empire extremely undermaned by the time Justinian died, and it was decades until someone ascended to the throne who had the strength to hold the floundering empire together, another story for another time. In short all of Justinian's gains were lost and the Lombard's opportunely inhabited Italy in the following centuries.
Now back to the question, in the aftermath of the fall of the Empire, Western Europe exchanged many hands and fell under the submission of many swords and the general populace was largely helpless to stop it. Western Europe was always less prosperous than its Eastern counterpart, and I doubt there would have been too much change in the average routine in the life of the average peasant. Farmers would have still toiled away in the fields, and small communities would merely be paying tribute to new overlords. Economically, trade would have been reduced as its epicenter was Constantinople, goods and spices would have definitely made their way to Western Europe, and there are records of trade reaching as far as Britain, however it was never as plentiful as the height of the Roman Empire. This would have directly affected any wealthy citizens who had not migrated to the East, the security that the Empire had provided had left with the coming of the 5th century, and on the whole living standards decreased.
I hope this in someway answered your question, and if you have any other questions i'll do my best to please. :)
Your question is kinda difficult to answere due to the fact that your asking about two different social class from two different areas which are considered seperat entities(The Western-and Eastern Roman Empire), but in broad terms i would say that, The wealthiest of citizens would be the citizens of eastern part of Roman Empire and they continued to be Romans until the fall of Constantinopel in 1453 to the Ottomans. While the commoners would be people from the Western Roman Empire, most notably the region of France, England and Spain today, they would go on and become the serf of the dark ages(which is actually a continuatioing of a Roman tax law that tried to bind the farmers to the land for a steady population to tax).
Really interesting question! I also found this, which is also interesting that you can read while we wait for someone that hopefully knows about this to answer :)
