How did the roman empire govern its territories?

Answer 1

The conquered lands of the Roman Empire were divided into provinces. These provinces were ruled by governors who would be answerable to Rome. There were two types of provinces. One type was an imperial province, where the emperor would appoint the governor and the other was the senatorial province where the Senate would appoint the governor.

Answer 2

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 3

the split of the roman empire is when an emperor split it in half and gave the other half to his adopted brother.