After finishing my previous article about Medieval Feudal Kingdoms with famous Voltaire's joke about Holy Roman Empire I figured I should write a similar article about actual Ancient Roman Empire, that too was neither Roman nor Empire.
People who admire Rome imagine it to be a giant super country that completely surrounded Mediterranean Sea with its vast territories. That however is misleading. While Rome indeed had presence all around the above-mentioned map, it was a lot more tenuous than people would like to think.
Back in Roman times the one and only form of polity in Italy was that of city-state. Sure, there was also Persia and Egypt in the east, but these are too culturally distant to influence Rome until much later and even their power of Persian King of Kings or Egyptian Pharaoh was far from what we would now consider a state. Rome and Ancient Italy either inherited or borrowed this system from Greek city-states, like that of Athens. Some of Italian city-states were founded and inhabitant by Greek colonists, others by native Italians who imitated Greek system. Because of the above, all we know about Roman life, law, government system and such only ever applied to the city of Rome itself. The rest of the 'Empire' functioned completely differently.
The rest of Roman Empire could be subdivided into two distinct parts, neatly divided from each other by famous Rubicon River in modern Emilia-Romagna Province of Italy. South of it were Greco-Italian city states who were in a league with Rome, Romans called them foederati, which meant allies. Foederati effectively paid Rome tribute and in exchange Rome protected them from barbarian raids, that were a common problem back then. In fact, Rome even developed its strong and effective military to protect itself from barbarian raids and was so effective they later started selling it to their neighbors. Aside from being clients of Rome, these southern city-states were effectively independent, they had their own laws, citizenship, government systems, even militaries. Relationship between them and Rome was more akin to diplomatic relationships between modern states or member states of NATO.
Meanwhile north of Rubicon lied Cisalpine Gaul. Later word Gaul got associated from France alone, but back then it effectively meant all northern barbarians. Rome was paid by foederati to protect them from these Gauls. Thus, areas outside of Italy and north of Rubicon were effectively an ungraded and lawless frontier and Rome had even less control there as Americans had over their Midwest during wars with Comanche. Gauls were just as unwilling to negotiate as Comanche, thus Romans only dealt with them with force, Romans never set foot north of Rubicon as civilians, but only as soldiers going for war. Thus, when Ceasar hesitated before crossing Rubicon it was not in a proverbial sense but in much more literal one. North of Rubicon was a lawless frontier where Romans only ever ventured in force as part of their Legions, south of it was area of law and agreements between Romans and foederati and stepping there in force without disarming as per regulations was equivalent of declaring war on whole Roman led alliance.
Thus, a large map of Roman provinces was not a map of the extend of Roman state, as we understand state nowadays, but more of a map of Roman military bases and their areas of responsibility, similar to American military Unified Combatant Commands with their areas of geographic responsibilities. In addition to that it was also a map of whole world as it was known to Romans at the time. At the time of Augustus Romans had only vague idea what was north-east of Rhine or Danube. They explored and mapped these areas much later.
In all these provinces there were native people with their native forms of social organisations that existed in parallel with Roman military bases. Roman relationships with these people varied, sometimes Roman forces played significant role in governing some of these natives, sometimes they would hire natives as axillaries to their own forces, and at yet other times they only defended Roman installations and operations in the area. Ultimately however it was Roman military commanders who dealt with natives in their commands, that Romans called provinces. People who 'governed' provinces were first and foremost military commanders in charge of legions in the area, and administrators only second. Roman Legions were core basis of their authority. It was different from rules-based order south of Rubicon.
In later waning stages of Roman Empire some Emperors would experiment with actually administering of all these provinces, trying to bring them closer to what we understand as provinces in a single country nowadays. They would use experience of Egypt in particular where polity was not limited to a single city-state as Pharaoh and his administration ruled over whole of Egypt with its many cities. Romans would eventually try to implement it across their empire, but the reform did not succeed. If anything, attempt at something like that might even led towards collapse of Roman Empire altogether. A modern equivalent of such a move would be like if the US suddenly announced to the world that independence of all nations are abolished and the US will rule the world by merging its institutions with these of the United Nations structures. Ultimately however Roman provinces never functioned as parts of one common state, as we understand it nowadays.
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