Roman professionals whose value was purely institutional—lawyers whose practice depended on Roman civil law courts that ceased to function, Imperial administrators whose salaries came from a treasury that went bankrupt, military logistics officers of an army that disbanded when it couldn't be paid—struggled during the collapse, and some adapted by repurposing their knowledge to serve new political realities, but the collapse exposed the fragility at the core of credential-based economic identity: your value in a failing system is only as durable as the system itself.