I understand that they never thought of the Republic as gone, but I do think they could have wanted a reformation of the Republic.
Maybe with a Senate that continues functioning with an earlier fall of Rome in the IIIrd century...
That's wild tought, but you'd likely see a huge political division without clear imperial succession as it happened with ERE with having instead something like several "dux"*-led Roman states along or preceeding Romano-Barbarian kingdoms.
It's likely that Senate would keep functioning, and without the political and identitarian role played by the pope ITTL (In This TimeLine), Roman people would still keep being largely identifying itself trough municipal institution.
Let's assume that the post-Imperial Italian state is more centered on Milan or another city than Rome, and is relatively hostile to senatorial elites. With a right context (alliance with an opponent of this Italian state, for exemple) you could see a revival of SPQR as an independent entity (but more or less limited to Rome's and its immediate countryside) with a popular support (while it would certainly be lead and at the benefit of urban elites)
How long it would last is anybody guess (critically with such vague context), but basically it points what's necessary IMO.
- Strong identitarian role of the Senate for Roman population
- No clear imperial successor
- Rome becoming politically secondary and untied to regional hegemony to think itself as one.
* Yeah, I know it's something I regularly propose for earlier fall of Rome during the IIIrd century.
Yea, I know they were heavily romanized, but just like the Hellinized world ended with a very different culture than Greece
More so, actually. Hellenization was, roughly speaking, about Hellenic culture being sur-imposed on different cultures : Celtic, Syrian, Etruscean, Egyptian, etc.
Safe exceptions (and these really happened during Roman rule, as in Anatolia), it didn't went as an acculturation.
That's what happened, tough, with regions conquered by Rome, and even more so with peoples and groups that settled within accultured regions.
You certainly had much, much more difference between a Syrian and a Greek from Syria, than between a Frank and a Gallo-Roman.
I do think a Roman state that had a "pure" line of Roman Culture would be very different (obviously, it would still be influenced by other cultures, but to a lesser extent).
I must admit, I'm not too sure what you're describing.
Roman culture ceased to be "pure" as soon Rome went out of Latium : it collided with different cultures, languages, civilisations and while it largely romanized them, it certainly knew a lot of influences (the most obvious being the hellenic influence).
Eventually, I think you had too much of not only non-"purely" Roman influences but as well regionalisation that we can still speak about such thing.
Now, I don't want to derail the thread too much, so let's see about a lesser "Germanisation" of Western Europe (it would still happen, would it be trough the presence of migrants or deported peoples in western Romania, even without full fledged conquest. And giving the moves of populations, you can bet you'd have a lot of Barbarians within Romania)
Eventually, I'm not sure it would be that distinct in a first time : Late Antiquity structures largely remained intact on Romano-Barbarian states, and even more so in Eastern Roman Empire.
As it would involve important PoDs, and large butterflying, it's hard to say what would exist, but it's true that several features (that were less direct consequences than indirect) wouldn't appear : politically, the most obvious would be the absence of the mix between territorial beneficii and political clientelisation (that gave way in the VIIIth/IXth to feodalisation).
A more mediterranean focused Europe, meaning a societal development more along old trade roads for what matter Barbaricum (and no consequences of the huge mess of the Vth, such as Scandinavia going downhill); more urban** based political power, fiscal redistribution (trough imperial "liberality") allowing preservation of direct trade and political links...
** Roughly so. It's not like urban elites didn't already moved to countryside since the IIIrd century. But you'd make them returning at least periodically so.
I don't think that's really compatible with a return of "Republicanism" in Rome : more successful the imperial structures, even less likely the need to replace it.
About Africa, I think the thinking is that at the time, Africa was the empire's breadbasket, where Italy was failing at producing enough food.
That, but it could have been taken trough trade. What mattered was eventually its fiscal capacity, that remained largely intact, for imperial policies.
I'd disagree there with Fabius there : while Italy was enough to make Ostrogothic state functioning (especially with Sicily), imperial ambitions are hard to fund, especially large armies needed for basic interventionism.