How did the Romans govern the territory?

Answer 1

This is a very broad question, and in part, it is not definitively answerable. Most people who know about history remember that Rome had provinces which stretched from Africa (Morrocco), to Egypt, to modern Turkey, to modern Germany, and into northern England. They also would likely know that Rome sent out governors, periodically, to take charge of these provinces and govern them. But this is a very simple explanation to a widely varied answer.

Parts of Rome's Empire was governed by vassal Kings and Queens. During the 1st century BC, the kingdom of Bithynia, in modern Turkey, was a vassal of Rome, and was required to provide revenues and troops to Rome. A similar arrangement was in effect in Egypt at the time of Cleopatra, where Rome essentially left Egypt alone to govern itself, so long as Egypt provided Rome with what it needed.

However, most territories, such as Illyria, Superior Gaul, Hispania, Africa, Macedonian, etc., were given over to the rapacious governance of Rome's patrician elites. Governors were sent to a province as part of their political career track, and they had only one real task, to keep the populace of their province loyal and pacified. The governors used force, kindness, brutality, and generosity in order to maintain order during their governorship. Governors usually had 1 or 2 legions garrisoned, according to the will of the Senate in Rome, but some provinces had no legionnaires at all. Therefore the governors would often have to provide their own police force for their own protection. The Governor of a province would also hire private tax collectors, who would guarantee a certain amount of taxes, and in exchange, they would keep the rest of the taxes they raised. A Governorship was contemporaneously seen as a way of becoming rich.

For those governorships that had command of legions, such as the 4 legions in Britannia, or the 2 or 3 in Dacia, these troops would set up camp in one area, and soon, they would be split into many smaller units called vexillations, to be deployed more widely across the province. Soldiers from these legions would also, upon their retirement from the legions, usually be granted land in veteran's colonia (a town or village set up originally for retired legionnaires' homes). These were placed in restless or violent provinces, since in an emergency, a Governor could call upon all retired military men to come back into the legions temporarily until the emergency had passed.

Finally, it is important to note that outside of Rome, there was precious little bureaucracy. There were no fire departments, usually no town hall that help property records, or even road maintenance crews. Everything that needed to be done, such as draining flood plains, building bridges, maintaining roads, constructing walls, digging wells, all was organized, paid for, and managed by either the governor, or one of the people on his staff. This staff usually consisted of mostly slaves, perhaps a military adviser or even a commander of a local legion. Almost every "public" work in the Roman Empire was more of a privately owned project. Even bathhouses were built by patricians, or governors, and then donated to the Roman state or Emperor.

Answer 2

The Roman Empire grew out of a chain of separate events and situations, such a wars waged against her, her being drawn into the squabbles of other peoples, and concerns about the instability of areas bordering the empire when Rome was already in control of most of the Mediterranean. It was only after this that annexation truly became a war aim.

Rome fought three wars against Carthage. The first war developed into a fight over the control of Sicily. The second one was an invasion of Italy by the Carthaginians, but its outcome and that Rome took the Carthaginian possessions in southern Spain. In the third war, Rome destroyed Carthage because she feared a resurgence of Carthage's military power and became the sole master of the western basin of the Mediterranean. Three Illyrian wars were fought on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea (next to Italy). Rome established a protectorate in Dalmatia (the coastal part of Croatia). Rome wanted control of the Adriatic Sea to stop piracy from Dalmatia.

The expansion into the eastern Mediterranean started with the annexation of mainland Greece which was due to political instability in Greece. This annexation aimed at ending this instability, which had drawn Rome into wars in the area to defend her Greek allies in wars between Greek states.

The expansion into Turkey started with the bequeath of a kingdom in western Turkey (Pergamon) to Rome by its king. The king of Bithynia (in north-western Turkey) also bequeathed his kingdom to Rome. Three wars were waged against Rome by Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus (in eastern Turkey) who wanted to expand into the rest of Turkey. Rome won. As a result Rome annexed parts of Turkey and set up a client state in Armenia. Concerns about political instability in Syria and Judea, which had become neighbours of the empire, led to the annexation of Syria and the setting up of a client state in Judea.

It was only after this that there were wars with the design of annexation. This is not surprising as Rome had become a superpower. The first instance of this was Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul.

Control was maintained through tolerance. The Romans tolerated the religions and customs of the conquered peoples. They allowed them to continue to worship their religions, follow their customs and use their customary laws at the local level. They also let the local ruling classes run most of the local affairs. The role of the provincial governors of the provinces (conquered territories) was restricted to defence and maintenance of the legions stationed in the provinces, tax collection, public works and the arbitration of disputes the locals could not resolve by themselves. This policy had two advantages: it reduced the administrative load of the provincial governors and it facilitated the integration of the locals into the ideology and the economy of the empire. A less tolerant policy would have led to too many rebellions and would have threatened the stability of the empire.

The provincials, the people outside Italy who had been conquered or were under Roman influence, enjoyed the rights of jus gentium (the law of nations). Nation was the Latin word for ethnicity and just gentium was a sort of natural law which was regarded as "innate in every human being." The rights it conferred were considered to be held by all persons. They were based on the notion that the concept of justice sprung from the human mind rather than ethnicity and that they applied regardless of citizenship. Through this, the provincials enjoyed the protection of Roman civil law in their dealings with Roman citizens. Cases between Romans and non-Romans were adjudicated by the praetor peregrino, the chief justice for foreigners, who was supposed base his rulings on fairness and on Roman civil law.