Was managing the rome empire in ad117 easy or difficult?

Answer 1

It depended on the strength of central authority. The Roman Empire was subdivided into provinces which were administered by provincial governors. The central government's inability to control these governors was one of the reasons for the demise the Roman Republic. It had become dysfunctional and unable to cope with imperial expansion. Corruption was rampant. Tax collection in the provinces was tendered to private individuals who practiced tax farming (they lined their pockets through extortion) and the provincial governors (who were picked from among the senators) acted as if their provinces were their own domains. They could levy their own legions as the Republic did not have a centralised recruitment system. This led to a series of civil wars which brought the Republic down.

Augustus, the final victor of the civil wars, became the first Roman emperor and instituted absolute rule by emperors. He created an imperial administration under his control. Tax collection came under his bureaucracy. Most of the provincial governors were his subordinates and were appointed by him. He gained control of the army. This created a strong central authority capable of controlling the empire and led to what historians have called the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), a two hundred-year period of relative political stability.

As long as the provincial governors were under control, the empire was quite easy to manage. The Romans managed the conquered peoples through a policy of tolerance. They tolerated their religions and customs and allowed them to continue to follow them. They also allowed them to continue to use their customary laws at the local level, which they called mos regionis (regional traditions/laws of the land). They relied on the local ruling elites to run local affairs in the provinces. This policy fostered political and social stability. It had two advantages: it facilitated the integration of the locals in the provinces (the conquered peoples) into the ideology and the economy of the empire and it reduced the administrative load (and the associated costs) of the provincial governors. It limited the job of the governors to defence and the maintenance of the legions stationed in the provinces, tax collection, the commissioning of public works and the arbitration of disputes the locals were unable to settle themselves. A less tolerant policy would have led to rebellions and would have threatened the stability of the empire. It worked throughout the empire except for Judea, where there were a number of rebellions.

The system had some flaws. Civil and military office were not separate. Most of the Roman legions were stationed in the frontier provinces of the empire. They were commanded by the provincial governors who were both civil administrators and military commanders. If central authority weakened, this could be a recipe for civil war as governors could use their troops to seize power. A warning of this came in 69 AD when with the death of Nero there was a civil war between two pretenders to the imperial title. In 193-97 there were two civil wars between three pretenders. The final victor, Septimius Severus, executed may senators on spurious charges and replaced them with his favourites, replaced the imperial guard with veterans from his legions, raised the wages of the soldiers and created what was effectively a military regime. The dynasty he created got caught up in intrigues between family members and the imperial institution lost its authority. This was followed by fifty years of military anarchy and civil wars where provincial governors/'military commanders seized power after having been proclaimed emperors by their own troops and were then challenged by other governors/commanders who were supported by their own troops. The turnover of emperors was high as many were murdered, sometimes even by their own troops who had proclaimed them because they did not want to fight a civil war. Two parts of the empire broke away (the Gallic Empire and the Palmyrene Empire). The emperor Aurelian re-established the unity of the empire.

After the period of military anarchy, the emperor Diocletian took measures to strengthen imperial control. He doubled the number of provinces to reduce their size and the power of the governors, whose administrative roles was also reduced. He grouped the provinces into twelves dioceses. This was a higher tier of bureaucracy run by an appointee of the emperor, who controlled the governors, to which they were subordinate. He also separated political and military office by creating the duces as the commanders of legions. Diocletian also created four main administrative units (the praetorian prefectures) headed by two senior co-emperors and two junior co-emperors (this was the tetrarchy, rule by four).

After Diocletian abdicated the tetrarchy fell apart as the co-emperors fought each other. Constantine the Great became sole emperor by winning two civil wars. There were civil wars between the sons of Constantine who were given shares of the empire. Eventually the empire stabilised with the establishment of the Valentinian dynasty. However, there were still problems. Diocletian's reforms doubled the size of the imperial bureaucracy, which became top heavy and very expensive to maintain. Similarly, repeated attempts to invade the empire by peoples who lived near it and wars with the Persians lead to continued increases in the size of the army and, in addition to this, several emperors increased the pay of the soldiers. The burden to fund the army and the bureaucracy became hardly sustainable and raising the funds for this become very difficult and a high priority for the imperial government. This led to oppressive taxation regimes and the curtailment in the freedom of the citizens of the empire aimed at reducing tax evasion, which, in turn, led to disaffection with the imperial government.