How were the Romans so successful in maintaining their empire? How is it possible that such a huge land area could be governed by a single power without modern communications networks? Why did subjugated peoples so readily submit to foreign domination and foreign taxes? Rome actually had relatively little bureaucracy to control its empire. Control was maintained more through conditioning the minds of the conquered masses to accept Roman rule than a complex system of government. Through careful planning, Rome used various methods of control to pacify and please the millions under its control. Rome, of course, did not gain control of its immense empire overnight. Thus, its policies of control slowly evolved as necessity was placed upon it. Firstly, consider the beginning of Rome's power-- its domination of Italy.
             Italy, much like Greece, was a land of the city state. However, quite unlike Greece, Italy was extremely diverse. There was no common bond that Italians (if that term could even be used) could point to in order to say that they were a single people. Starr points out the arrival of Greeks, Phoenicians, Etruscans, Latins, Gauls and many others in Italy in pre-Roman times. It may be somewhat easy to understand how empires of Greece, such as the Delian League could have arisen, given that the people of the empire shared a common heritage. But Italy was a different matter altogether. The people shared no common language, let alone a common culture or literary tradition. Perhaps this was the greatest challenge that Rome ever faced in the development of its empire. If Rome could not succeed in uniting its own peninsula, how could it ever unite the rest of the world? Breasted describes the careful approach that Rome took in uniting the conquered states of Italy: "The Romans began by granting the defeated cities a kind of citizenship." Perhaps the key decision of Rome was in treating its conquered people like equals, and not ...