网帖翻译

Spencer McDaniel
That’s not how it worked. It wasn’t like the Roman Empire just disappeared one day, leaving a bunch of Romans sitting around in anarchy saying, “Whelp, it looks like our Empire’s gone. I guess things suck for us.”
The decline of the Roman Empire was extremely gradual and, to most people who were alive at the time, it probably was not entirely clear at which point the Roman Empire came to an end. As I talk about in this article I published in July 2019, there are nearly a dozen different people you could consider candidates for the title of “last Roman Emperor.”

事情不是这样的。并不是说罗马帝国有一天就消失了，留下一群无政府状态的罗马人坐在那里说“ 嘿，看起来我们的帝国已经消失了，我想事情对我们来说很糟糕。”
罗马帝国的衰落是极其缓慢的，对于当时还活着的大多数人来说，可能并不完全清楚罗马帝国是在什么时候结束的。
正如我在2019年7月发表的一篇文章中提到的，你可以认为 "最后一个罗马皇帝 "的头衔有近十几个不同的人选。

Furthermore, there were, in fact, many attempts to reestablish the Roman Empire. The Byzantine emperor Justinian I (ruled 527 – 565 AD) probably came the closest out of anyone to fully reestablishing the Roman Empire. Justinian I reconquered many Roman territories that had been lost, including all of Italy, most of North Africa, and large parts of Spain.
The reconquest of former Roman territories under Justinian I was to a large extent possible due to the extraordinary military talents of Justinian I’s general Belisarios (lived c. 500 – 565 AD), whose bloody but highly successful campaigns are recorded by the Byzantine historian Prokopios of Kaisareia in his book On the Wars. Ultimately, all of the territories that were reconquered during the reign of Justinian I were eventually lost. Nonetheless, the Byzantine Empire managed to hold onto territories in southern Italy until as late as the eleventh century AD.

此外，事实上重建罗马帝国的尝试并不少。
拜占庭皇帝查士丁尼一世（公元527年-565年在位）可能是所有人中最接近完全重建罗马帝国的，查士丁尼一世重新征服了许多已经失去的罗马领土，包括整个意大利、北非的大部分地区和西班牙的大部分地区。
查士丁尼一世之所以能够重新征服前罗马领土，在很大程度上要归功于查士丁尼一世的将军贝利萨里奥(约公元500年-565年在世)非凡的军事才能，凯撒利亚的拜占庭历史学家普罗科皮奥斯在他的《论战争》一书中记录了他血腥但非常成功的战役。
最终，查士丁尼一世在位期间重新征服的领土最终全部丢失，尽管如此，拜占庭帝国还是成功地守住了意大利南部的领土，直到公元11世纪末。

Another person who came rather close to restoring the western Roman Empire was the Frankish king Carolus Magnus (lived c. 748 – 814 AD), better known today as Charlemagne. Charlemagne managed to bring all of Gaul, much of Italy, and most of Germany under his own rule. On 25 December 800 AD, Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne as emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.Charlemagne’s Holy Roman Empire was explicitly promoted as a restoration of the Roman Empire. Pope Leo III declared that Empress Eirene Sarantapechaina, the ruler of the Byzantine Empire at the time, was illegitimate because she was a woman and, according to Pope Leo III’s reasoning, no woman could legally serve as empress of the Roman Empire. Therefore, Pope Leo III declared that Charlemagne was the true ruler of the Roman Empire.
The Holy Roman Empire survived until it was officially dissolved in 1806. That means you could make a not-entirely-silly argument that the Roman Empire actually survived until the early nineteenth century.

另一个非常接近于恢复西罗马帝国的人是法兰克国王卡罗莱斯 · 马格纳斯 ( 公元748-814年 ) ，其更为人所知的称号便是我们今天熟知的“查理曼大帝”，查理曼成功地将整个高卢、大部分意大利和大部分德国置于他自己的统治之下，公元800年12月25日，教皇利奥三世加冕查理曼为神圣罗马帝国的皇帝。
查理曼大帝的神圣罗马帝国被明确宣传为罗马帝国的复辟。
教皇利奥三世宣布，当时拜占庭帝国的统治者瑞纳 · 萨兰塔佩查伊娜女皇是非法的，因为她是一个女人，根据教皇利奥三世的推理，按照教皇利奥三世的推理，任何女人都不能合法地担任罗马帝国的女皇，因此，教皇利奥三世宣布，查理曼是罗马帝国真正的统治者。
神圣罗马帝国一直存在到1806年正式解体——也就是说，这意味着你可以提出一个并不完全愚蠢的论点：即罗马帝国实际上一直存活到19世纪初。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Mark Antichi
Firstly you have to define “fall” In 330 ad the capital of the Roman Empire was moved from Rome to Constantinople,and in 395 ad the Roman Empire permanently split into two halves, the western ruled first from Milan, and then Ravenna, and the eastern from Constantinople,so, you have to get it out of your head that when in ad 410 the city of Rome was sacked for the first time in 800 years it was the capital of an empire, it was not. However, you should not underestimate the symbolic “shock value” of such an event. Also the inhabitants of the Eastern Roman Empire considered themselves as Roman as the inhabitants of the Italian peninsular, even though many of them couldn't speak a word of Latin. If you asked them what they were, they would have answered “Romaioi” and the eastern/byzantine emperor held the title of “Autokrator ton Romaion” “Emperor of the Romans” This is because in 212 ad Roman citizenship had been extended to the entire empire, every citizen of the empire was now Roman after having been earlier in 88bce extended to the whole of Italy , however in the case of the latter as opposed to the former there was virtually total cultural/lingustic integration.

首先，你得给 "灭亡 "下个定义，公元330年，罗马帝国的首都从罗马迁到了君士坦丁堡，而在公元395年，罗马帝国永久地分成了两半，西边的统治者先是从米兰，然后是拉文纳，而东边的统治者则是从君士坦丁堡开始的，所以，你必须忘记公元410年被洗劫的罗马城是800年来第一个帝国的首都，它不是。
然而，你不应该低估这种事件的象征性“震撼价值”，另外，东罗马帝国的居民也认为自己和意大利半岛的居民一样是罗马人，尽管他们中的许多人一句拉丁语都不会说。
如果你问他们是什么人，他们会回答 "Romaioi"（罗马人），东罗马/拜占庭皇帝拥有"罗马人的皇帝 "（ "Autokrator ton Romaion"）这一头衔，在公元88年扩展到整个意大利之后，公元212年罗马公民身份已经扩展到整个帝国，帝国的每一个公民现在都是罗马人，然而在后者的情况下，与前者相比，几乎有完全的文化/语言融合。

Of the other languages apart from Latin spoken in ancient Italy only Greek in the south survived. When the empire split into two halves, the western half only lasted 80 odd years until 476 ad,but the eastern half survived another 1000 until 1453 and the term“Byzantine” was invented by us, they considered themselves a continuation of the original Roman
at the time, it was not at all perceived by people that the empire had actually fallen, that’s our subjective interpretation, it was more a case “oh the west has been lost” while the east was carrying on in its own sweet way for another millennium. Why did the west go so quickly and the east survive? This is a constant source of debate amongst historians, perhaps one major reason was tax revenues, the eastern half contained virtually all the wealthier provinces, providing a solid tax base to fund their military, whereas in the poorer west they had a real problem funding their military, hence raids by Goths Vandals etc.

在古代意大利使用的语言中，除了拉丁语之外，只有南部的希腊语得以保存，当帝国分裂成两半时，西半部只持续了80多年，直到公元476年，但东半部又存活了1000年，直到1453年，"拜占庭 "一词是我们发明的，他们认为自己是最初罗马帝国的延续。
在当时，人们根本不认为帝国真的已经灭亡了，这是我们的主观解释，更多的像是 "哦，西罗马已经没落了"，而东罗马却在以自己的方式延续到另一个千年。
为什么西罗马消失得那么快，而东罗马却能生存下来？这是历史学家们一直争论不休的问题，也许一个主要的原因是税收，东罗马几乎包含了所有较富裕的省份，为他们的军队提供了坚实的税收基础，而在较贫穷的西罗马，他们的军队经费确实存在问题，因此才会有哥特人、汪达尔人的袭击等等。

When the western empire ended, at first nothing much happened in Rome or other Italian cities, it was more a political change than anything else, under Odoacer who deposed the last western emperor, and the Ostrogothic king Theodoric, the infrastructure and way of life of the ancient world carried on much as before, the acqueducts still functioned, the drainage and sewage systems remained intact people still went to the baths etc, this is because Odoacer and Theodoric were pretty pragmatic guys who wanted peace and stable rule. Things changed dramatically for the worst in 535 when the eastern emperor Justinian attempted to resurrect the western half of the empire by invading Italy. Cities and towns all over Italy were captured re-captured re-re-captured by rival armies burned devastated and generally trashed. The sewage, irrigation and drainage systems were permanently destroyed, you had mass starvation, dead bodies were being stuffed in the now defunct sewers causing all sorts of diseases and infections, which, together with the various food shortages reduced the population dramatically. Even though the eastern imperial forces eventually defeated the Ostrogoths and retook the whole of Italy, they were too overstretched to hold on to it, this let the Lombards in to cause more mayhem still. Eventually the empire and the Lombards carved up Italy between them, but this was highly unstable and in succeeding centuries you got Franks, Saracens and various other people throughout the course of time using Italy as battle ground until Italy became a nation in 1861.

西罗马帝国结束的时候，起初的罗马和其他意大利城市并没有发生什么事情，更多的是政治上的变化，奥多亚克推翻了最后一个西罗马皇帝之后，在东哥特国王西奥多里克的统治下，古代世界的基础设施和生活方式仍然和以前一样，获得的教育仍然有效，排水系统和下水道系统仍然完好无损，人们仍然去浴室等等，这是因为奥多亚克和西奥多里克是相当务实，他们希望和平和稳定的统治。
公元535年，东罗马皇帝查士丁尼企图通过入侵意大利来复兴帝国的西半部，事情发生了戏剧性的变化，意大利各地的城市和城镇都被敌对的军队占领再占领再占领，被烧毁，被破坏，普遍被糟蹋，污水、灌溉和排水系统被永久破坏，大规模的饥饿，尸体被塞进已经失效的下水道，造成各种疾病和感染，再加上各种粮食短缺，人口急剧减少。
尽管东罗马帝国军队最终打败了东哥特人，重新夺回了整个意大利，但他们已经因过度扩张不堪重负，无法再坚持下去，这让伦巴第人得以趁势而入，造成了更多的混乱，最终帝国和伦巴第人瓜分了意大利，但这种局面极不稳定，在随后的几个世纪里，法兰克人、撒拉逊人和其他各种人把意大利当成了战场，直至1861年意大利成为一个国家。

Joseph Boyle
It depends on what you mean by Roman. After 212 everyone received citizenship and Roman came to mean the people, Romania the state, and Romance the popular speech evolved from Latin. In the East what we now call the Byzantine Empire called itself Romania. Today's Romanians come from a continuous tradition of calling themselves Roman.
In the West political disunity was evident as early as the long crisis of the 200s, and the "Western Empire" was nominal well before 476. While wars were destructive, the influx of Germanic peoples did not mean the end of Romanity; they came to enjoy the civilization and claim legitimacy, not destroy it.
The names Romania and Romance were gradually eclipsed in the west because of the political divisions. Everyone was Romance-speaking anyway unless you traveled as far as Britain, Germany, or Africa, so the name had little descxtive power. Eventually the name Romance stuck to the troubadours' love literature in the popular language; now anyone can be Romantic.

这取决于你对罗马人的定义，公元212年以后，每个人都获得了公民资格，罗马人（Roman）的意思是人民，罗马尼亚（ Romania）是国家，罗马语是由拉丁语演变而来的流行语，在东方，我们现在所称的拜占庭帝国称自己为罗马尼亚（Romania），今天的罗马尼亚人来自于自称罗马人的持续传统。
在西半部，早在公元200年代的长期危机中，政治上的分裂就很明显，而“西（罗马）帝国”在476年之前就已经名存实亡。
虽然战争具有破坏性，但日耳曼人的涌入并不意味着“罗马尼亚”的终结，他们是来享受文明并宣称其合法性的，而不是来摧毁它的。
由于政治分歧，Romania 和 Romance 这两个名字在西罗马逐渐黯然失色，不管怎样，每个人都说的是罗曼斯语，除非你去过英国、德国或非洲，Romance 这个名字几乎没有描述性的力量，最终，Romance 这个名字在民谣歌手的通俗语言爱情文学中保留了下来， 现在任何人都可以罗曼蒂克（Romantic）。

Christian and Roman were used almost interchangeably. Medi Christendom was the successor of Romania, though as it assimilated Germans and Slavs, its bounds diverged from those of the Romance languages, but Latin was still the written language. In the Enlightenment of the 1700s, the geographic expression Europe started to displace the word Christendom.
Constantinople had the best claim to secular political institutional continuity, though still tenuous as the early Arabs twice besieged right up to the city walls. But the lack of a Western imperial title only lasted from 476 to 800, a total of 324 years, and not happy ones for the West, as Justinian's invasion wrecked Italy more than the Germans ever had, and Muslims rounded the Mediterranean to be turned back only at Tours after Charles the Hammer first mastered the previously Eastern technology of heavy cavalry.
Muslim dominance of the Mediterranean was what let the Pope become independent of Constantinople, who in frustration finally cut off the Pope's income from Sicilian estates in 732; the Emperor effectively fired him. The Papacy then allied with Charles the Frank, each supporting the other's usurpation of power, and creating the Western duality between allied but separate church and state institutions.

克里斯蒂安（Christian）和罗马几乎可以互换使用，中世纪的 Christendom （指信奉基督教的国家）是罗马尼亚的继承者，尽管它同化了德国人和斯拉夫人，但它的边界与罗曼斯语言不同，拉丁语仍然是书面语言，在18世纪的启蒙运动中，地理上的欧洲开始取代 Christendom 这个词。
君士坦丁堡是世俗政治制度延续的最佳地点，尽管早期的阿拉伯人曾两次围城，但是“西罗马帝国”头衔的缺失只持续了总共324年（476年到800年），这对西方来说并不愉快，因为查士丁尼（拜占庭帝国皇帝）的入侵对意大利造成的破坏比德国人任何时候都要严重，穆斯林环绕地中海，在“铁锤查理”首次掌握了先前东罗马的重骑兵战术后，穆斯林才在图尔被击退。
穆斯林在地中海的统治使教皇得以独立于君士坦丁堡，君士坦丁堡无奈之下，终于在732年切断了教皇从西西里地产获得收入的途径，皇帝实际上解雇了他，随后，教皇与查理一世结盟，互相支持对方的篡夺权力，并在结盟但分离的教会和国家机构之间制造了西罗马帝国的二元性。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

Josh Avinante
A related question would be “What happened to the Americans when Barack Obama conquered the United States?”
I would not blame the asker for such questions. Our modern world is still recovering the tyrranical ideals of nationalism and racism, which has been the “noble” ideal of the Industrial Revolution, that a civilisation’s identity is synonymous to race or nationality. Mind you that ideals change. Nationalism and racism was a positive virtue that replaced imperialism until humanity paid for that mistake during World War I and World War II.

这个问题之下有一个关联问题，"奥巴马征服了美国，美国人怎么了？"
（译注：答主回答的时间是2020年，并非奥巴马选上总统那年 ）
我不会责怪提问者提出这样的问题。
我们的现代世界还在恢复民族主义和种族主义的暴虐理想，这一直是工业革命时期的 "崇高 "理想，即一个文明的身份是种族或民族的代名词。
但是我想提醒你，理想是会变的。
民族主义和种族主义一度被视为一种取代帝国主义的积极美德，直到人类在第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战期间为这一错误付出惨重代价。
原创翻译：龙腾网 https://www.ltaaa.cn 转载请注明出处

The Romans obviously began with a core race, which even historians cannot seem to identify. But they were the inhabitants of Rome who spoke Latin. From a contemporary point of view, one would think of the Italians but that country is already as far from the Roman race as much as the multiracial United States has gone very far from its Jamestown and Plymouth Colony who were from England. By 1776, a vast majority of American colonists had already been Scotch-Irish who were better hunters and survivors of the wilderness. Colonial politicians seemed predominantly English though. By 1941, a certain Franklin Delano Roosevelt who has an Italian-American accent sat at White House. Durin the Vietnam War, a Kennedy of Irish descent was the most powerful man in the world in tje name of the United States of America.

罗马人显然一开始有一个核心种族，但连历史学家似乎都无法确定，他们是讲拉丁语的罗马居民。
从当代的角度来看，人们可能会想到意大利人，但是这个国家已经远离了罗马种族，就像多种族的（美利坚）合众国已经远离了英国詹姆斯敦和普利茅斯殖民地一样，到1776年，绝大多数的美洲殖民者已经是苏格兰-爱尔兰混血儿，他们是更好的猎人和荒野生存者，不过殖民地的政客似乎主要是英国人。
到1941年，操着意大利口音的美国人富兰克林·德拉诺·罗斯福入主白宫，越南战争中，有着爱尔兰血统的肯尼迪以美利坚合众国的名义成为世界上最有权势的人。

Just a few decades after the Roman Republic became the Roman Empire with Octavian, a “pure Roman” in today’s standard, as first emperor, Caesars began hailing from Spain such as Trajan. As early as 30 A.D. during the rise of Christianity, Romans had become multiracial. Saint Paul was a Roman of Jewish descent. By 476, the Romans had been extremely multiracial -Saint Augustine from Carthage, Artorius Castus from Britain, Saint Paul from Judaea, Emperor Trajan the Spaniard.
Historians mark the end of the West Roman Empire to the “conquest” of Odoacer the German but yet Odoacer is a genéral in the Roman Army. Odoacer is Roman. Odoacer was just as Roman as Barack Obama is American.

就在罗马共和国成为罗马帝国，屋大维（以今天标准来看，这是一个“纯粹的罗马人”）成为第一任皇帝的几十年后，凯撒开始从西班牙呼风唤雨，早在公元30年，随着基督教的兴起，罗马人已经成为多种族的，圣保罗是一个犹太裔的罗马人。
到公元前476年，罗马人已经成为极端多种族的人——迦太基的圣奥古斯丁、英国的阿托里乌斯 · 卡斯特斯、 犹太亚（Judaea 古代罗马所统治的一个地名）的圣保罗、西班牙的图拉真皇帝。
历史学家们把西罗马帝国的灭亡标记为德国人奥多亚克的 "征服"，然而奥多亚克却是罗马军队的将领，奥多亚克本人是罗马人，就像奥巴马是美国人一样。

So to answer tje question, what happened to the Romans when the empire fell?
The last remnants of the West Roman Empire is the Roman Catholic Church, the Vatican obviously multiracial already. The last remnant of the East Roman Empire is the Greek Orthodox Church.
The original Roman Race had been diluted into its multiracial empire as early as the empire began. Latin is a dead language. It is no longer native to any nationality or race. According to legend, the original Roman race hails from the Trojans. According to archaeology, they hail from whoever those inhabitants in Rome that the Etruscans conquered. The Roman empire never really took account of pure romans nor did the empire classify its people according to race as the US does. The pure Romans just vanished in a sea of a multiracial empire.
The West Romans are now the Vatican, northern Italians and to some extent the Spaniards if we define West Romans as Latins. Some scholars call Italian Modern Latin. The northern Italians are heavily mixed with Ostrogoth and Lombard though while the Spaniards are heavily mixed with Iberian, Visigoth and Moorish. If you add the Germanic Romans, the West Romans include the French and Germans. Basically, Western Europe is what remains of the old West Roman Empire.
The East Roman Empire was eventually reduced to Constantinople. In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered the city and killed everyone in it eccept for the East Roman nobility that Mehmed II kept as slaves.

要回答这个问题，先看看罗马帝国灭亡时发生了什么。
西罗马帝国最后的残余是罗马天主教会，梵蒂冈显然已经是多种族的了，东罗马帝国的最后的遗迹是希腊正教会。
早在罗马帝国成立之初，最初的罗马种族就被稀释为多种族的一个群体，拉丁语是一种死亡的语言，它不再属于任何国籍或种族。
按照传说，最初的罗马种族来自特洛伊，而根据考古学，他们来自于被伊特鲁里亚人征服的罗马居民。
罗马帝国从来没有真正考虑过纯粹的罗马人，也没有像美国那样按种族划分民族，纯粹的罗马人消失在一个多民族帝国的海洋中。
如果我们把西罗马人定义为拉丁人，那么西罗马人现在就是梵蒂冈人，北意大利人，某种程度上就是西班牙人。
一些学者称意大利语为现代拉丁语，尽管西班牙人混合了伊比利亚人、西哥特人和摩尔人，但意大利北部人却混合了奥斯特罗哥特人和伦巴第人，如果加上日耳曼罗马人，西罗马人包括法国人和德国人，基本上，整个西欧都是旧西罗马帝国的遗存。
东罗马帝国最终沦为君士坦丁堡，公元1453年，奥斯曼土耳其人征服了这座城市，除了被穆罕默德二世作为奴隶保留的东罗马贵族之外，城里所有的人被屠戮殆尽。

Hisey Patton
If you read much about the history of the Roman empire it was much akin to the Soviet Empire. It was built through force of conquest. Even the Italian peninsula was made up of an amalgam of tribal peoples, the Etruscans, the Romans, the Latins and many others. They were unified by force by the Romans. Expand this over the entire empire and you have something akin to the USSR. Take away the one unifying force, the Central government and the Legions and it quickly reverted to small tribal nation states ruled by whomever could grasp and hold power locally.We forget that most civilization was in the cities and that a vast area could be controlled by a relatively small force of a few tens of thousands of armed men. If you controlled a few towns or villages you controlled the whole country. This is why they built castles and fortresses. People lived in isolated villages with now news of the outside world and little care about it. They were too busy eking out an existence. The only time they came in contact with "so-called government" was when they were told to pay taxes, or were called up to serve in the militia to fight in the local leader's wars.
They expected whoever was in charge to protect them from the depredations of invaders, but that was about all. There were no "services" expected in return, no highways, no public utilities, you know the kind of things we expect in return for out tax dollars. So intrusion by a ruler, was for two things, taxes and military service, or labor. All three made it harder for you to continue feeding your family so were generally unwelcome.

如果你多读关于罗马帝国的历史......你会发现它很像苏维埃帝国。
它是通过征服的力量建立起来的，甚至连意大利半岛也是由部落民族、伊特鲁里亚人、罗马人、拉丁人和许多其他民族混合而成的。他们是由罗马人用武力统一的，把这一点扩大到整个帝国，你就有了类似于苏联的东西，拿掉统一的力量——中央政府和军团——它很快就回归到可以由任何人统治的小部落民族国家，这些人可以在当地掌握权力。
我们都忘了，大多数文明都在城市里，一个相对较小的几万名武装人员的力量就可以控制一个广大的地区，如果你控制了几个城镇或村庄，你就控制了整个国家，这就是为什么他们要建造城堡和要塞，人们住在与世隔绝的村庄里，现在对外界的消息并不关心。
他们忙于生存，他们唯一接触到 "所谓的政府 "的时候，是被要求交税，或者被征召到民兵队伍中去参加当地掌权者的战争。
他们期待着有人能保护他们免受侵略者的掠夺，但仅此而已，没有期望回报的“服务”，没有高速公路，没有公共设施，所以统治者的入侵，是为了两件事， 税收和兵役，或劳役，这三者都会让你更难继续养家糊口，所以一般来说是不受欢迎的。

The fall of the Roman Empire and the Sack of Rome would have sent a thunderbolt of chaos through the surrounding countryside but it would have taken longer for it to manifest itself in outlying provinces. Those more remote would have continued in a status quo, with the governors or local leaders still weilding power. In absence of orders or guidance from Rome, they would have eventually evolved into their own little principate of sorts. Subject only to larger more powerful neighbors. This all led to the fragmented state we saw in the Dark Ages, until a larger more powerful leader emerged with enough clout to try unifying the fragmented parts back into a coherent whole. Charles Martel was one such, who ruled over the Franks, former Gaul, and created the Holy Roman Empire, feudalism, and knights of the court.
This kind of disunity continued in the Italian peninsula itself up to Napoleonic times.

罗马帝国的灭亡和罗马被洗劫，给周围的乡村带来一片混乱，但是要在偏远的省份表现出来则需要更长的时间，那些比较偏远的地方会继续保持现状，总督或地方统治者仍然掌握着权力。
在没有来自罗马的命令或指导的情况下，他们最终会演变成自己的某种小公国，只受制于更强大的邻居。
这一切都导致了我们在黑暗时代看到的分裂状态， 直到一个更大的更强大的领导者出现，有足够的影响力，试图统一分散的部分，回到一个一致的整体。
查尔斯-马特尔就是这样一个人，查尔斯 · 马特尔就是这样一个人，他统治着前高卢人、法兰克人，并创造了神圣罗马帝国、封建制度和宫廷骑士。
这种分裂在意大利半岛一直持续到拿破仑时代。

So at its core it shows that we revert back to an almost gang like state in absence of strong central control. One can only imagine what would happen in the US in the absence of a strong central government. We would fragment along regional, ideological and geographical barrier lines. Smaller less populated and economically independent states would ally themselves with larger stronger states.
The Blue states might find themselves in a bind, take California for instance. The state is only Blue in the major metropolitan areas, the outlying rural areas upon which the cities depend are Red. So which way would the state go if the Feds were not there to enforce a lot of the rules? Energy rich states like Texas, Oklahoma and the Dakotas, all Red, might use that leverage, they are also the site of many of our largest military bases.
The populous but resource poor eastern states many of which are Blue and dependent on the Feds for welfare handouts would be in turmoil. Take NYC for instance or Chicago. Who feeds all the parasitic mouths when their is no Federal government to do so? The individual states cannot and would not do it. Federal mandates would end in absence of the big stick. States would have to fend for themselves.
This is pretty much what the individual provinces had to do.

这一切表明，在没有强大的中央控制的情况下，我们又回到了一个几乎像是帮派一样的国家。
我们可以想象一下，如果没有强大的中央政府，美国会发生什么——我们将沿着地区、意识形态和地理障碍线分裂，人口较少、经济独立的小州会与较大的强州结盟。
蓝州可能会发现自己陷入困境，以加州为例，加州只有在主要的大都市区是蓝色的，城市所依赖的外围农村地区是红色的。
那么，如果没有联邦政府设定和执行的大量规定，这个州会走哪条路 ？
德克萨斯州、俄克拉荷马州和达科塔斯州等能源丰富的州，都是红州，可能会利用这个杠杆，它们也是我们许多大型军事基地的所在地。
人口众多但资源贫乏的东部各州，其中许多是蓝州，依靠联邦政府的福利救济存活，将陷入动荡，以纽约市或芝加哥为例，当他们没有联邦政府时，谁来养活这些寄生虫？各个州不能也不会这么做，在没有大棒的情况下，联邦的强制规定就会结束，各州将不得不各自为主。
这几乎是各个州不得不面对的事情。