Rome didn't initially set up to conquer the world, but gradually did so anyway. A side effect of its empire-building was the reduction of Republican Rome's democratic policies. Rome started as a state where yeoman farmers provided all their families needed and went to war to protect their property. As a result of the expansion a great chasm formed separating the rich from the poor in Rome by the end of the third century B.C. The landless poor huddled in tenements in Rome, while the wealthy lived in luxury just a hill away, gaining their wealth from great plantations in the countryside.
Note: By this time the rich were not necessarily patrician and the poor plebeian.
After becoming the dominant power over most of Italy, Rome fought the Carthaginians in the Punic Wars. The
treaties Rome had set up with the confederate nations of Italy had become unimportant in her fight with Carthage. Rome became dictatorial, making difficult demands of her allies. Those who balked or rebelled paid dearly for it, but Rome wasn't originally trying to expand her territory. Mostly she was fighting to defend her friends and allies or because of a treaty violation. Rome fought wars in Illyria to protect her trade routes against state-supported piracy, and came to the aid of the Greeks who opposed Philip V of Macedon. Rome even fought against one of Philip and Hannibal's allies, the Seleucid king of Syria. Then Rome turned north to keep the Gauls from attacking again and to protect the vulnerable northern borders of Italy. To this end Cisalpine Gaul became a Roman province. In 180 Rome completed the northern border by annexing Liguria and bodily moving many of the inhabitants. By the end of the first Punic War, Rome controlled Sicily. By the start of the second, she controlled Corsica and Sardinia. She acquired Spain after the end of the second Punic War. She gained control of Carthage (146), Asia (133), and part of Transalpine Gaul (122).
While Rome was expanding its power base it was becoming less
democratic and more an oligarchy. The senate decided some matters without reference to the assembly of the people. The proconsular commanders of military units were given increasing terms, and, with them, power. Annual magistrates came to be concentrated in only a few families. The client-patron system meant that the big names received general, popular support. Economically, a select few had been able to profit during the wars by getting state contracts for ships and provisions. With the great loss of life during the Punic Wars, departure from their farms of men who had become professional soldiers, and the increase in acreage taken by the expansion, land became available to those wealthy senators who had the capital to buy it. They created
latifundia (plantations) and destroyed many of the self-sufficient yeomen farmers. In Rome, businessmen bought up houses that burned and rebuilt
insulae, the Roman tenement buildings to house the new urban poor.
A leader sent to govern the provinces was at the head of a substantial staff, including assistants and garrison troops. His powers as governor were not under close scrutiny back home, and his rule could be autocratic, although governors generally relied on the provinces to run themselves. The provinces didn't have the restraining condition citizens of Rome had; that is, they couldn't appeal capital sentences. Against bad practices in the provinces, the Lex Calpurnia, which passed in 149, created a law court, under the praetor, to deal with the investigation of extortion in the provinces. Unfortunately for the provincials, cases couldn't be tried until after the proconsul's term as governor was up.
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