. Even among the Senators, their paganism often seems to have been a matter of upholding the mos maiorum rather than particularly strong religious conviction, and there's no evidence that any significant number wanted to revive the Julianic policies, much less take them further.
This is a small point but I’d contest the idea that personal religious conviction mattered to pagan Romans at all.Public observance and ritual was entirely more important to them than actually “believing it”. I’d say roman paganism would survive only if it could be reformed to give better incentives to continue practising it.
Also roman religion being so intimately tied to government would mean that even if senators were cynically evoking old traditions to gain power, that would easily fit in with the religious tradition of supporting religion for political gain.
On a larger scale I’d like to ask an open ended question andboit the future of a pagan western rome
Let’s say that the franks are brought in but at some point western rome does collapse.
How does this affect the latinisation and cultural assimilation of groups like the franks?
Would the lack of Latin as a liturgical language mean that german tribes would retain a distinct religion they imported or would they try and emulate roman religion to try and fit in with the gallo roman elite?