Funny, I wrote something on this just yesterday!

The main thing to note that is that the average Roman worked on the land and never partook in the things we associate with Roman civilisation. Art was after all only something that can be enjoyed at leisure by the truly elite. The average Roman didn't write histories, lead armies or debate philosophy with their friends. They didn't even live in cities! They had to perform manual labour and deal with the problems farmers across the world had to deal with - market pressures, inconsistent weather conditions and of course the often harsh and exacting state bureaucracy. Likewise for the smaller number of urban citizens. They might receive some benefits like the grain dole, but they were still poor and disenfranchised from the political process, outnumbering by far the urban elites we know so much more about. This is also ignoring the vast numbers of slaves the Romans had, or the tenant farmers who were tied to their land, or those caught up in a revolt or a raid etc. Life can be very unpleasant!

As Peter Brown, one of the most eloquent historians of late antiquity, put it:

Most persons lived miserable lives, at a standard of living that never reached beyond that enjoyed by the populations of other preindustrial empires, such as Moghul India. Like Moghul India, the Roman empire was a colorful place. But the color wore off very quickly as one descended the social scale. We should always bear this in mind. The noise generated by a vivid Christian discourse on wealth and poverty (written by members of the curial class and largely addressed to the inhabitants of the cities) affected only a small proportion of the overall population. It has to be set against the vast silence of a wider world “that failed even to begin to share in the moderate amount of economic growth”.

However, the silent majority of the empire didn't write the sources that most historians use to reconstruct the past, so their voices are often left unheard. Instead, we almost only ever hear of wealthy educated men playing at politics and occasionally smashing some barbarian hosts on the side, which unfortunately still shapes our image of the empire today, rather than the terrible truth, that it was a brutal empire ruled by brutal men in a brutal age.

Of course, the general prosperity at the top of the Roman Empire allowed some wealth to trickle down, with a famous example being that even the lowest hovel in Italy had tiled roofs and potential access to cheap but well-made pottery. This however did not mean that they lived 'better' lives than their medieval descendants, living in the so-called 'Dark Ages' (which wasn't really a thing in reality). These Romans had no political voice, they were ruled by a state fully prepared to clamp down on any sign of dissent and they were certainly not free to do what they wanted. On the flip side, with the collapse of centralised political authority and the taxation system after the 'fall' of Rome, many peasants may well have enjoyed greater social and political freedoms, which we often forget when we only look at textual sources from the perspective of the elite. No doubt many people lived weary lives after 476, but that was hardly different to the years before that.