germanic people in less than NUMBER_TOKEN years different events would be catastrophic in one area while being barely noticeable in others social position also made a difference it's hard to know if the average peasant noticed any change in the state because we do not have any testimonies from them but we could assume that the daily life of a farmer did not change much unless they were victims of attack on the other hand the roman landowners and aristocracy that survived the invasions fell to change as now they had to come to terms with the new germanic kings while the central roman state disappeared in the periphery lastly the settlement of some germanic people was a slow integration in some parts of the empire and this could happen over generations so even if some change did happen it was possibly hardly felt while in other regions it was much more traumatic we can discern the mood of some inhabitants of the empire if we look at some ecclesiastical writers who were less interested in the political situation and instead narrate the lives and miracles of the saints of the time from them we get different points of view on the social situation and it's interesting to see how some authors underline the transformation which occurred with the arrival of the barbarians affirming a point of rupture while others minimize their presence speaking about a continuation of life and norms of the latter we have as an example the life of saint germanus of oxa described by constantius of lyon while narrating the good deeds completed by the bishop in an invaded gaul we can read a society where the germanic and atlantic peoples are participating in daily life and are not the cause of all evils on the other side of the coin we have sidonius apolinaris roman aristocrat and bishop of orven where he led the roman resistance against the visigoths he thought that the situation in gaul was polarized between a barbaric invader and a dying roman culture a strong supporter of the old roman norms that he had been educated in he felt that they were constantly in danger from the germanic people in his mind the only remedy to this decadence was to escape to the monasteries where the romans could conserve their culture having now painted a general picture of those years let us look now at what the contemporaries thought about the deposition of the last roman emperor romulus augustulus one of our most important sources of those years is the anonymous felecianis an author of whom we have two texts which describe the events from the age of constantine to the end of the reign of theodoric mentioned the deposition of NUMBER_TOKEN commenting that the young emperor was allowed to live in exile in naples with a pension the event is not described with any hint of importance as he certainly does not talk about the end of an empire or of the roman world as far as the italian romans were concerned the empire as a political institution continues to exist in fact the sack of rome perpetrated by alaric visigoths in NUMBER_TOKEN had a much greater effect on the writers of the time prompting the christian philosopher and bishop saint augustine to write his most important work the city of god to defend the christian faith from attacks coming from pagans who saw christianity as the cause of the weakness of rome
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