around its
central city or cities. Each empire had its distinctive institutions and
practices. During these centuries all of the empires were defeated,
conquered, occupied and either dismembered or otherwise brought under
Roman control.

Extension of Roman authority, first over the Italian peninsula and
subsequently over parts of Europe, Africa and Asia, was the result of a
policy of expansion that was aggressively, persistently and patiently
followed by Roman leaders and policy makers. Neighboring territories
were amalgamated into the nucleus of the Roman Empire. More remote
territories were associated by treaty as allies of Rome, as dependent or
client dependencies of Rome, and as colonies or provinces of the Roman
Empire. In all cases they were integral parts of an expanding political,
economic and military sphere of influence with Rome, and later Italy, as
the center and nucleus. In the course of this development the expanding
Roman Empire grew to be the wealthiest and most powerful political,
sociological and cultural unit in the Euro-Asian-African area.

The Roman imperial cycle spanned some thirteen centuries. During this
period Roman life was transformed from its small, local seat of
authority in Central Italy into its new stature as the outstanding power
in the Mediterranean area. Economically it extended from peasant
proprietorship and a use economy to a market-money economy; from a
society of working peasant farmers to an economy resting upon war
captives reduced to slavery; from an economy based on production for
trade and profit to an economy based on power-grabbing, special
privilege, speculation and corruption; from an austerity economy based
on primary production to an economy based on affluence, exploitation,
and gluttony.

These revolutionary transformations in the Roman economy were
accompanied, politically, by hardening of the division of Roman society
along class lines with the resulting contradictions, antagonisms, and
class struggles, including open class warfare.

Domestic contradictions, confrontations, civil strife and formal civil
war were present throughout the entire history of Rome. They existed in
embryo in the earliest days of the original settlements on the seven
hills over which the city of Rome eventually spread. As Rome and its
interests became more complex socially and more extensive geographically
the number and variety of contradictions, confrontations, civil and
military conf