When did the Roman Empire fall (your thoughts)?

[starman2012]

Why did people have any loyalty to the Empire in its early days? Why would people have any loyalty to the Empire in its later days?

Identification with Rome, due to being Roman or romanized and the benefits of empire.

Once civil wars became endemic, it did not provide much protection, although it might provide relative protection against certain external enemies.

Breakdowns in security were serious in the third century but temporary. Claudius clobbered h barbarians in 268.

And quite a few people withdrew support, or even went into rebellion: the Bagaudae, the Thracian miners, etc.

Generally not until the empire was really far gone in the fifth century.

Jones suggests that the tax assessment system overtaxed marginal land, and taxed abandoned land, leading to multiple crises after the plague of Marcus Aurelius, declining agricultural production, etc. And then there were exemptions and other favors for the richest, most influential landowners. Goldsworthy argues that a wider circle of soldiers, not necessarily Senators or even Equites, were able to aspire to the emperorship, making it harder for any one emperor to hold off rivals, without the agentes in rebus, Paul the Chain, forcing Silvanus into rebellion, etc.

There had always been power struggles and economic problems. The empire always survived until the fifth century when it appears to have lost the support of most of its own citizens. By then many actually associated the crumbling of rome with an imminent "second coming."