It 's said that Rome 's conquests changed Rome 's view on power. Originally, Rome didn 't plan to rule the world. They just needed to defend themselves. In doing so though, they needed to subdue more and more enemies, each time taking control of them. As this went on, Rome came to lust for power itself. Rome began to oppress their conquered subject. Their greed increased substantially at the cost of their honour. These conquest also resulted in large quantities of people being subjects to Rome but without any actual rights, or in some cases very few rights, to actually participate in government. Yet even without rights, these people were required to add to Rome 's wealth. In some cities (the Italian ones), the people were required to provide soldiers for war. In others …show more content…
Even those calling themselves full Roman citizens didn 't actually have much say in their own government. The government offices, both the curule offices and the senate, came to be controlled by the noble families. The power of the popular assemblies withered and shrank as well. Rome was in theory a republic, but in practice, it began to take on characteristics of an aristocracy once more. The provincial governors were once elected, but those positions came to be given to former praetors and consuls. As the curule offices (including those of the praetors and consuls) were controlled by the wealthy aristocratic class, the optimates, these aristocrats also had the power to run the provinces. Within the provinces, the governors had to answer to the senate, but the senators were their fellow aristocrats. The governors mostly had free reign to do as they pleased with thier provinces and had full control over taxation and administration of the law. Taxes weren 't collected directly by the governor though, and Rome allowed the publicani (money dealers) collect the taxes on their behalf. The publicani could collect whatever taxes they wanted to, as long as they paid Rome