To answer the first one, I'll quote something I said earlier:
The SPQR is in less of a feudal system, for there is a sizable class of non-clone freedmen. The freedmen tend to own their own meager houses (if they are urban) and farms (if they are in the countryside), sometimes but rarely their own slaves (with most slaves being owned by wealthy aristocrats, generals, governors, or senators).
The clones however are in the exact same 'Dominal' predicament as those everywhere else. And the rural freedmen are by law required to farm and so are their sons, and same for the urban freedmen, with whatever skills they have.
Italia and the Holy Roman Empire are quite similar. The territories of the former Alemannian Empire, as well as the Hunnic state, have small amounts of non-clone freedmen too.
That's a good idea. I could only see that happening in one of the totally not-Roman states like Rygaland, Doringen, Jutheland, and the Slavic states.
Well, for your alternate societies, there is the Empire-Consulate, the elective monarchy of Etruria, the Holy Roman Empire (okay maybe that's a bit based on the real HRE...but it's hundreds of years earlier), and the fact that the Rahbarate is just a regular despotic monarchy instead of a 'tribal democracy'.
