>>567869
the fall of rome is a meme.

>>567869

They have their economic bases damaged by the Vandalic conquest of Africa, bu at least a part of the Roman Aristocracy survived and focussed their wealth in Sicily and Italy herself.

Some went to Constantinople.
The ones who remained were fucked by the Gothic Wars.

Relevant noble families still existed around Rome, and Rome herself through the Middle Ages, some could have been related to the Old Roman Nobilitas.

>>567869
They became slaves

the cost of maintaining a political career and a public life became too much and most were broken and faded into obscurity for economic reasons (sulla was piss poor thanks to his father and relied on his other relatives because of it)

or they were destroyed for other reasons, whether violence or the result of people refusing to breed in the patriciate/reduction in fertility because of the constant inbreeding or other reasons

>S.C.Gilfillan claimed that the decline of Rome was due to a decline in the birth rate of the oman patrician class comng from dysgenic lead poisoning. Although all Romans got a goodly intake from their lead-lined water system, the elite drank more than its share of wine from lead vessels and this was thought to reduce the fertility of the leaders!
interesting notion but probably not really trustworthy

In September 476 AD, the last Roman emperor of the west, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by a Germanic prince called Odovacar, who had won control of the remnants of the Roman army of Italy. He then sent the western imperial regalia to Constantinople.

The Roman empire in western Europe - a centralised superstate which had been in existence for 500 years - had ceased to exist, its single emperor replaced by upwards of a dozen non roman kings and princes.

In the violent process of collapse, some local Roman societies immediately went under. In Britain and north eastern Gaul particularly, Roman landowners lost their estates and Roman culture disappeared with them.

In southern Gaul, Spain, and Italy, Roman landowners survived by coming to terms with the migrants.

The end of the Roman empire generated many states where previously there had been one, and another casualty of 476 AD was thus the Pax Romana. Warfare became endemic to the former Roman west.

>>568089
Dark age Europe was born out of the violent destruction of the Roman empire, as the battlefield replaced the bureaucracy as the heart of elite life, but its ramifications were felt at every social level.

This brings us to the peasantry. One striking feature of post-Roman archaeology is the substantial decline it demonstrates in overall population. Even if peasants don't fight, they are not immune to the effects of warfare, and declining economic opportunity also hit their capacities to make a living.