CONCLUSION
I
The spreading outwards of Rome was a process almost as old as Rome
itself. But the transition from oligarchy to monarchy at the beginning of our
period (27 BC to AD 235) ushered in a new phase of expansion, extending
Roman rule well beyond the Mediterranean basin.
Rome’s rulers pursued contrasting aims in the Mediterranean world and
in the world removed from the Mediterranean. In the former, a level of
political and cultural unity was achieved not previously known in antiquity.
Rome reconciled the Greek East to its rule by protecting Hellenic civic
culture and encouraging its diffusion; meanwhile immigration, colonization
and cultural penetration which had begun in the Republican period
narrowed the gap between Italy and those regions of north Africa, France
and the Iberian peninsula that were already part of the empire. In the latter,
Rome’s mission was conquest and pacifi cation rather than the spread of
Graeco-Roman civilization. Measured in terms of the incidence of urban-
ization and the extent of assimilation of local urban elites into the Rome-
based governing class, imperial institutions and culture (Romanization)
made relatively little impact on indigenous structures and ways of life in
these newly conquered areas. The hegemony of the political and cultural
elite of the Mediterranean was not broken until the mid- third century, when
endemic frontier insecurity placed the direction of the Roman empire in the
hands of military men from the Balkans. This vast empire was administered
by a few offi cials. The emperors instituted a modest expansion in the number
of administrative posts and diversifi ed the social background of offi cials, but
this marked rather less than a departure from the tradition of government
without bureaucracy. Offi cials owed their appointment and promotion to
personal factors, not rules, and were directly responsible to the emperor. The
aims of government remained limited to the enforcement of law and order
and the raising of revenues for the support of capital city, court, administration
and army. To achieve the fi rst of these aims, Augustus organized for the fi rst
time a professional army. In respect of administrative practices, however,
there was substantial continuity with the past. Revenues were raised more
effi ciently and from a wider area, but no attempt was made to impose a
uniform tax system.
Instead of reforming the central and provincial administration, emperors
followed the traditional policy of building up an infrastructure of centres of
local government which could render practical services to the imperial
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